


Prodigal

by Skull_Bearer



Series: Anteverse Refugee [5]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Sex, Depression, Drift Side Effects, Grief/Mourning, Jaeger Pilots, Jaegers (Pacific Rim), M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mind Control, Mind Rape, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Starvation, Suicide, The Anteverse, The Drift (Pacific Rim), The Hivemind, There is no other word for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3813862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skull_Bearer/pseuds/Skull_Bearer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war has dragged to a shuddering end. Everything and everyone is broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As always, so many thanks to Sherriaisling for taking the time to look this over!

_On the last isthmus of land, the Kaiju hunts._

_The land is low here, the suns hang bloated on the horizon and her shadow flies for miles. Her eyes are sore from the light which had blinded her and sent her howling from the pits. The heavy air is thick in her lungs and her pace has slowed from that first mindless gallop to a slow walk._

_There had been more than her, she recalls vaguely. Uncounted when they had spilled across the land at the first, their bodies half-alien to them, their minds lost and roiling in the vastness of the Silence that engulfed them._

_They are behind her now, one by one peeling off from the great pack to the sea, the mountains, the deep valley, until she is alone._

_The exhaustion pulls at her great muscles, her bones are heavy for rest. In her belly, her child stirs fretfully. They move often now, impatient to be born. Their kicks are strong, sweet pain. On the horizon, one of the suns dips down the further south she goes, one already already sunk into the sea, a second soon to follow._

_The claws scratch her mind._

_Once, they had been talons so huge she could not comprehend them, sinking so deep within her that even her pain was no longer hers. No more. They are no more than an irritation now, weak and pathetic. Too few to break through the great walls of their minds._

_Her siblings had not thought them worth pursuing. They slipped away to found territories or to feed or simply to fall dead asleep in their tracks- too tired even to find shelter._

_Her offspring kicks again._

_There had been mountains behind her, great things with valleys that trapped the heat of the suns and grew lush with food. She turns her heavy head to look back at them. To lie on the ground, to feed and to sleep and to birth and nurse her young-_

_But the claws are still inside her mind. The Silence is broken by their hiss and chatter._

_The child moves again fretfully, and she has to pause to catch her breath. They want to be born. They want to be born but she will not let it come to this world while the claws are there. They cannot reach her, she is too great for them, but her child is small, vulnerable._

_Their world will have Silence._

_They are here. She can feel them. A sudden stillness as they sense her. Her claws scratch at the ground, but theirs are still sharp and she roars, head snapping back as they lash at her, try to force her back- The frenzy catches at her and she digs at the cover of their burrow in a spasm of rage, teeth burning to bite and claws to tear-_

_The ground under her regrows almost instantly, burns her claws and makes her snarl and dance away._

_She pauses, settles heavily on the packed ground and stares at the burrow. There is no motion. They are in there, she can feel them, feel them chatter and catch at the corners of her mind- too few, too weak to hurt her now. In the great strength of the Hive, the many minds huddled together for protection, they can no more than howl and whine from the shadows._

_The whisper of hot air from the burrow brushes her muzzle, and turns her head to focus one set of eyes with difficulty on the small hole in the burrow. Breathe. The burrow is breathing. The Masters are breathing._

_Her claws are clumsy as they dig up the sun-baked earth, a great mound under paws made to kill rather than build. She carefully smoothes it over their burrow. It takes three efforts before the earth not longer sinks and the hot air stops completely._

_She settles back on her side, distended stomach swollen under her. Her young kicks again, protesting this discomfort. She ignores it. Listening._

_The claws sink into her mind, sharper than before, edged with desperation. They tear and scour and scream at her and she huddles down, the old terror fracturing in her bones. Her hindlegs kick as they grab at her mind, the Silence shattering to shrill high noise. They reach for her child._

_She feels her cousins, her siblings, shiver at the echoes in the Hivemind. Feels them stir and panic. Their rage crashing into the Hive, walls of fury cutting out the claws and the Orders- for now at least. Enough time for them to reach her and end this last poisonous threat._

_But the screams do not last. A few heartbeats and their claws begin to blunt, their attacks grow weak. They are dying._

_The ground slips, trying to open; she sweeps more earth over it with her tail, burying whatever was trying to come out. The claws crack, fracture;, the Orders fall silent._

_The Kaiju listens as one by one, like dying stars, the Masters go out. Extinguish. The claws fading to old scars in her mind, the screams fading to whispers, to nothing._

_The Silence stretches like soothing water over the world, over her. It sinks into her bruised and aching mind, sweet and cool and wonderful. The voices of her siblings- so long lost under the claws and the Orders- come to her in a murmur, soft and omnipresent, shifting and warm against hers._

_Her head is heavy, her body begs for rest. The world is empty of all but the Silence._

_Her child pushes inside her, and she gets up wearily. It is a long walk to the mountains, but there, she will rest. Her child will be born and will know nothing but the Silence._

 

* * *

 

_Newt wakes up and it is all a dream. The Breach never opens. Nothing bursts from the sea that August afternoon. No Jaegers guard the shores. Hundreds of thousands of people are not dead. There is nothing but silence in his mind. His skin crawls with emptiness. He lies alone in the narrow cot of his lecturer's digs at MIT and wants to die._

_He wakes up and the Breach is closed and it is all over. The Shatterdome empties and everyone goes home to forget. The Jaegers rust and the bodies of the last Kaiju rot or are sold off in a final frenzied burst by Hannibal Chau. Newt lies in bed with thirteen years gone to nothing and five useless PHDs and with Hermann gone home to a normal life without him because of course he's human and can barely stand you and he said he only Drifted because the world would end if he didn't-_  
_Newt dreams of lying between Otachi's teeth and waiting for her to bite._

 _He wakes up and his skin burns with Kaiju blue and Hermann's eyes are open and empty and he's not bleeding anymore because there's nothing in him left - it's all over the floor and the Infiltrators' claws and teeth and **all over Newt** \- _  
_Newt doesn't cry. He doesn't feel anything but cold. It dulls the pain of the toxins and freezes into his bones and sinks into his mind until he can't even think anymore. He lies on the floor next to Hermann and stares at the concrete ceiling and wonders how long the Kaiju Blue will take to eat through his skin._

Newt wakes up sobbing. He's got his head stuffed under the pillow and when he hauls himself out he's soaked and snotty and shaking. He fumbles for his glasses and only manages to knock them off the bedside table. The room is pitch-black and the narrow bed is cold around him.

He doesn't try for the bedside light. He gets up and stumbles to the bathroom in the pitch-black, kicking one of his boots over and choking out a wet curse.

Newt manages to hit that light switch and collapses beside the sink. He's so cold it hurts, shaking so hard his bones ache. He lifts his hands to his face and it's puffy with heat. In the mirror he's unshaven and pale, eyes and nose garish red. He closes his eyes and tries to calm down. Draws in deep breaths that crack to choking sobs with every lungful. Hunches cross armed on the edge of the metal bowl and drops his head on his folded wrists. Breathes. Deep. In. Out.

Finally, it's over. He's still shivering, but it's mostly cold. He still looks awful, but he splashes his face with tap water and rubs his eyes and cheeks until everything looks equally red. It's not much better, but he hasn't exactly looked great recently.

He leaves the light on, only bothering to add a shirt to his ensemble of sleep pants, and grab his glasses. Hopefully they'll hide how bloodshot his eyes are.

There's no one in the corridors at this time. It's a relief. The people at the Shatterdome might be less likely to throw rocks at him, but they always have something choice to say. Newt would like to find whoever said words hurt less than sticks and stones and have them walk in his shoes for a week. A lot of long fucking weeks.

Most of the lights are off to save power- because apparently it's their fault Hong Kong is one big brownout right now. Newt hugs the walls and it's not far, one of the small work stations tucked away in the bowels of the building- a replacement until their lab is back to some level of functioning.

Hermann's only got one sidelight on, so the room is pale blue from the monitor. Kaiju blue where it touches off Hermann's forearms; dull black on his coat. He's got the hood pulled up, huddled in the thick layers like a replacement skin.

"Hey." His head snaps around so fast the hood nearly falls off. His eyes reflect the glow of the monitors; the irises expand in the darkness. Blue. "Just me dude."

Hermann nods, eyes soften from wariness. "Could you not sleep?" his lips stretch as he speaks, slip down to reveal neat, sharp teeth. They reflect blue too.

Blood-blue.

Newt has to force his mind away from that pit, manages to smile. "Nah." He sits next to Hermann and gets a small smile in return. The hood casts strange shadows across his face, hollowing his cheeks, deepening the notches of his nose and ears. "You know how it is."

Hermann nods, turns back to the screen. "I am sorry. I- could not sleep. The Marshall wants this and-" He sighs, shakes his head. "Was it a nightmare?"

Newt feels his mouth start to move of its own accord; _Yes_ , he wants to say, _Yes it was a nightmare. A horrible nightmare. You were dead or didn't exist or hated me and the Kaiju were gone and no one died and the war was over and the war never happened and the world was **so fucking empty** I wanted to die-_ He plasters a smile across his face. "I'm okay."

Hermann glances at him and oh fucking god he's so beautiful Newt can't bear it and _it hurts_ even to look at him because he's so _alive_ and with all these dreams it's starting not to seem real any more after waking up so many nights with blood all over his hands and he's seen him stop breathing and never start again so many times he's _lost count_ and even after he wakes up there's all the cold glares and snarled words in the Shatterdome and what's in the cold store that he can't think about and for a moment it all piles in on him and all Newt wants is for Hermann to reach out and gather him up and put Newt's head in his lap and let him cry and hold him and tell him everything is gonna be okay- gonna be fine-

And wouldn't that be just great. Because Hermann doesn't have enough to deal with, with Herc breathing down his neck about the Breach and everyone freaking out when he walks down the halls and Newt finding him lying in the bathroom in the shapeless, palespun remains of the skin he'd tried to grow from his one remaining spinneret and his _eyes_ wide and helpless and they both knew he was stuck like this for good.

Focus. Calm. Breathe. He's okay. They're okay. "What about you? Anything to show Herc?"

Hermann snorts and it's so familiar that for a moment Newt feels his smile stretch for real. "Hardly." He drums his claws against the table. "Look for yourself."

Newt looks over and it's pretty much gibberish on the screen, but the display's pretty familiar. The unbroken line of the Breach tying together their world and the Anteverse. It's the same as yesterday, and the day before; open, unchanging, and for some reason completely empty.

Hermann growls and types in a length of equations. The mouth of the Breach closes for a moment, then reopens. "It's the Throat. I can control the mouth of the Breach but the Throat is- jammed. Nothing we do has any kind of response." He rubs his face wearily. It's hard to tell like this, but he can't have had more sleep than Newt.

For a moment, there's nothing to say, both of them staring dully at the hologram of the Breach, so tired they can't even muster fear over what's going on at the other end. Why the Masters are just- waiting, biding their time.

And maybe it's the exhaustion talking, but there's something weirdly familiar about the numbers and equations Hermann's drawn up. Newt leans in. The holographic display's about the only thing that survived the battle in the lab, and Hermann's borrowed Doctor Li's E-board to replace his blackboards, which hadn't.

As he almost hadn't.

 _Shut up!_ Newt screams in his own mind.

"You know, I'm pretty sure I've seen that before." Newt props his head up and steals a swallow from Hermann's cup; it's tea, bitter and half-cold.

Hermann sighs, snatches the mug back and downs half of it. Newt watches his throat flex as he swallows; the bluish scars from the battle criss-cross the mottled skin, not quite faded yet. "You noticed it too?" He taps the E-board, enlarging it, and yeah that _does_ looks familiar. "I am sure I ran this simulation but- how? I think it is conclusively proven we have no foresight in these matters." Bitterly.

"Yeah, everyone's so upset we can't fucking see the future." Newt turns the display to better see it. It's all gibberish, but it’s _familiar_ gibberish. Where did he last see this? "Wow, turns out we can't read the minds of psycho aliens in another dimension, stop the fucking presses."

"And as a result, sixty four people are dead." Hermann's voice is taut. He's staring at the display without really focusing on it.

Newt grits his teeth, and opens his laptop. Maybe he can find something in his old files. "Yeah. We make wrong choices; people die. You know who also made a shitty choice? Stacker Pentecost for keeping Gipsy and Striker back in the Hong Kong fight. We lost the Weis and the Kaidanovskys for that."

Hermann gives him a _really_ ugly look. Newt shrugs it off. Everyone sees Pentecost like some kind of perfect hero- he fucked up like the rest of them.

"It's not up to us to make these calls." Hermann clenches his hands. "If the Marshall had all the information-"

"What did I tell you about listening to Herc again?" Newt frowns, opening the first list of folders and browsing through them aimlessly. Old formulas Hermann uploaded to his computer in case his harddrives corrupted. "And say he knew, so what? We thought they wouldn't bother with Infiltrators after you ran off." It feels weird saying that out loud here, not having to bother with keeping it a secret.

There's nothing useful in this folder. Newt opens a new one- photos of the lab- and starts checking them. If he sees something familiar they could at least narrow it down. He opens the _first fucking photo_ and stops dead.

"I'm not going to-"

"Shut up and look at this." He turns the screen to Hermann.

It's one from just after the Breach was closed, taken by a reporter during the miserably brief period they were all big damn heroes, when everyone from the pilots to the cleaning crew were being lined up for interviews. Someone had cornered Hermann in his lab and had him stand for a photo in front of his blackboards. Blackboards still covered in Breach equations.

 _Very familiar_ Breach equations.

"You must be joking." Hermann snatches the laptop.

Newt laughs, and yeah, it might be a bit forced, but not _that_ much, because it _is_ pretty funny. "Hey, you were right. Nearly three years early, but who cares, you were finally right."

Hermann doesn't credit that with an answer. His skin has gone a bit grey, like he's trying to vanish into the concrete walls.

Finally, he shoves the laptop back at Newt in furious silence and tries for haughty superiority, which totally fails. He takes it out on the keyboard instead, typing out a command so hard a claw goes through the plastic and impales the 'S' key. He swears under his breath and glares when Newt doesn't stop giggling which might be because it's _actually_ funny and might be because he hasn't laughed for _weeks_ and might be a little hysterical.

He chokes off when he sets the laptop down. He's about to close the photo viewer, then pauses, staring at the hunched, uncomfortable figure on the screen.

It's Hermann. Hermann in human skin, awkward and lopsided and so tangled up in skin it's crazy no one _guessed_. And when Newt looks at Hermann now he can see how he fitted inside that odd frame, the way the sharp edges of his face formed those cheekbones, the sharp chin, the broad expanse of his mouth.

And that man is gone. Newt knew him for thirteen years, saw him every day, argued and discussed and fought and maybe had a _tiny_ crush on him and he will never see that man again. It's a fucking stupid thought because Hermann is _right here_ , but his screwed up, broken brain just seizes on it and won't let go. Digs its claws in until Newt feels tears prick at the back of his eyes and has to swallow several times. His hands shake.

Hermann is too distracted to notice. "The parallels are not exact, but- you are right-" And wow, does that look like it hurt to say, "the Breach has stabilised. Something they must have done-" His claws tap as he types, hard little cracks. Several keys have scratches on them already. It's an unfamiliar sound, compared to the usual soft rattle Newt's lived with for fifteen years.

Newt plasters an utterly fake smile on his face. _Gloat. Laugh. Joke. It’s okay, it's okay._ "Hey, it's true what they say, good work is never wasted."

Hermann glares, and that's so familiar and strange at once that his plastic smile falters. "Here, make yourself useful and go through the logs." He types and Newt's screen blinks as lines and lines of code fill the screen. "The point we're looking for is when the Breach code changes to this-" He highlights the numbers in question. Practically the same as those on his blackboard two plus years ago.

Okay. Numbers. He can do numbers. It's way over his head, but after a while of scrolling he can work out the patterns where Hermann and Diane and the rest were turning their programs loose- and the totally insane gibberish coming from the other side. And wow, yeah, no wonder Hermann freaked. It got _really_ bad for a while, and Newt can just about make out where each push of the Masters was squaring the dimensions of the Breach, before Hermann got on top of it and it finally slowed down and locked.

And for a moment, the room, this place slips away and Newt's back in the lab- the lab he worked in for years and hasn't been back to for a month. Hermann- _human_ Hermann- sitting next to him and typing frantically on the keyboard while Newt sat there being useless while the Infiltrators were already stalking them, taking disguises from the BuenaKai and crawling to the Shatterdome-

"Newt?" The moment fractures and Newt is staring at Hermann- Kaiju again- looking at him too closely.

Newt forces a smile. "Right, sorry."

Hermann pauses. "This can wait; we have something to tell Herc now, we can go to bed if you want."

It must have cost Hermann a lot to suggest that, so close after a breakthrough, but the thought of sleep just makes his skin crawl as though Trespasser and Yamanachi and the rest were adding their protest. "Nah, we can keep at it. I know how much you wanna crunch numbers."

Hermann snorts, and Newt turns his attention back to the logs, records of the crazy struggle Newt had barely known was happening- he'd been hacking into the security footage by then- _shutupshutupshutup_

And- there. That's the point Hermann was looking for. And it comes right after one of the hardest pushes from their side- from Diane and her crew, and Hermann's programs.

Because Hermann hadn't been there to see it. The Infiltrators had been inside by that point and Newt has to clench his hands into fists to stop the shaking. _Not now, not now the numbers focus on that anything but this_

It's a struggle. Newt takes a few deep breaths to steady himself then checks the numbers to those on the e-board display of the Throat. They'd managed to dig their way more than halfway down- they'd been controlling more than half of the Throat; which meant-

"Well shit." Newt blinks. "You beat them."

Hermann glances over to Newt's screen, "What? What did they do?"

"No idea, but they only did it because you and Diane were about to kick them out, look." He turns the screen to Hermann. "This was their Hail Mary. They were about to lose control of the Throat." Something in Newt's chest bursts at his own words, a sudden, savage joy, so violent that it almost hurts. Fuck them. Fuck those evil, psycho headcases who thought omnicide was a cute pastime.

Hermann stares at the numbers in disbelief. He cannot believe it. The Masters are like some kind of alien version of fucking _Chuthulu_ and he's staring at evidence that he and his crew actually _beat them._

Hermann closes his eyes, shakes his head as though to force the impossible thoughts away. "So they stablised the Throat. Left an open channel neither side can affect rather than allow us to control it. That- I suppose that makes sense-"

"Hah!" Newt grins, a _real_ grin. It feels odd.

"Shut up. None of this is giving us any answers as to how to close it." Hermann flicks a claw against the screen, scrolling down.

"We know how to close it." Newt shrugs. "You _told_ us, two years ago. Nuclear warhead. Boom."

Hermann gives him a withering look and- it's stupid because Newt can't remember how many ugly looks Hermann has given him over the years but it's the first time it's really _hurt_. The smile fades. "The last warhead the PPDC was given got the Jaegers carrying it destroyed and we lost both pilots- they knew what Sierra was carrying."

"So what are you-"

"I am giving this to Herc." Hermann snaps, going back to typing. "If he wants to make the decisions, they are all his. Let me finish this report and we can be done for the night."

Newt tries to smile, a cold knot sinking slowly into his stomach, turning his guts to ice. "Sure. Tell me if you want me to look over anything."

Hermann grunts something that might be a snort or might be thank you, and Newt turns back to his laptop, digging through his file to find- some project he'd been leaving on the backburner. Something he can show Herc and say _See, I'm doing stuff._

To keep him from making demands about what's in the cold store.

Newt's fingers miss a key and the laptop beeps. He glances over, but Hermann's not looking. He takes a few deep breaths- _think of something else something else something else_

But there isn't anything else. In the last few weeks he's finished every last scrap of work he had left.

Hermann sighs and pushes his chair away from the table, he smiles at Newt tiredly. "There, done. Shall we?"

Newt forces a smile and gets up, one hand under Hermann's primary left arm to help him up. He's lighter than he used to be without the concealing layers of clothes and false skin. He stumbles, hunched over the still-healing wound in his side and the drag of his bad leg, and Newt catches him. For a moment Hermann leans against him, and Newt can feel the hard, lean lines of his body through the bulk of his coat.

His hands come to Hermann's shoulders and hold him there, his knees bumping into Hermann's digitigrade ones, the sharp pricks of Hermann's claws through his clothes, the heat of his breath when he lowers his head to Newt's shoulder and relaxes into the embrace.

Newt closes his eyes and thinks of cliffs standing stark against the ocean, mountains solid and unmoving, drawing power from continental drift, desert stones unmarked by weathering or rain- Solid, safe, here and eternal and _strong_ -

He doesn't feel strong. Inside, somewhere around his gut, all tastes of blood and metal and shivers at every touch until he just wants to bury his face in Hermann's chest and _cry_.

Hermann pulls away; he's smiling. He kisses Newt scratchy and light on his lips, and Newt manages a smile back because the last thing he wants is for Hermann to _worry-_

And Hermann kisses him again, hot and hard and Newt can feel his teeth sharp behind his lips and Hermann's secondary arms drifting to the small of his back until the two of them are pressed together tight -

Newt kisses back; because of course he wants this. When did he _not_ want this? He was the one who'd pushed for Hermann to shed more often, so they could spend more time without clothes or false skin between them.

And he does want this, he does- just… not as much as he wants to just close his eyes and curl against Hermann and just _go to sleep_ and not dream.

He kisses back again, harder, more confident, and Hermann purrs happily, a low, deep vibration that goes straight through Newt and, for a moment, he can forget. Just bask in sheer physical _pleasure-_

Hermann swallows; he's trying to stop purring, but it’s like trying to hold back hiccups. They come out in loud fits and starts, and Newt grins, pressing a kiss on the corner of his mouth. Hermann sighs happily and ducks his head under Newt's chin, “Shall we go?"

He smells hot and sweet, the curve of his skull is rough against Newt's lips, his spines prick his lips. He is so warm;Newt can feel him breathing, can feel the deep thrum of his heart against his back; fuck, Newt _loves_ him-

And Hermann looks up and smiles, and slips from his arms- only a few inches, but something in Newt screams for him to grab him- grab and never _never_ let go because he let go once and look what nearly happened-

Hermann's hand finds his, and the pain relaxes a little.

The corridor outside is still mercifully empty. Hermann leans against him, one hand in his, another wrapped around his shoulders. He leans against the door and smiles as Newt opens it, holding it for Hermann to go in. Hermann hobbles in stiffly, one leg dragging a little, claws cutting notches into the concrete as he braces himself.

Newt closes the door, and Hermann nuzzles the back of his neck, the rough brush of his lips, the faint press of his teeth; long fingers brushing the back of his arms, the tips of his claws raising goosebumps down his back. "Newton,"

Newt turns and his mouth smears messily across Hermann’s muzzle, the five deep grooves of his nose. Hermann smiles and Newt finds his mouth.

 

* * *

 

 

Newt takes his weight, walking them backwards until the back of Hermann’s legs hits the back of the bed, his weak leg buckles and he slides down to slump across the bed, Newt landing half on top of him.

The tension in his side flares into pain and he hisses; Newt rolls off him, "Sorry!"

Hermann curls up a little to relax the skin; the pain fades to the familiar dull, healing ache. Newt leans over and Hermann shivers as his lips brush over the messy knot of flesh and muscle. It’s not pain, but so tender it’s almost unbearable.

Newt kisses him again, almost reverently. His mouth is soft, electric and Hermann whines and shivers under the touch, his thumbs brushing the edges of the old wound.

"Newt," Hermann whispers. Newt looks up. "I am here."

Newt gives a slightly shaken smile, and Hermann rests a hand into his hair, closing his eyes as Newt shifts down, mouth brushing the edge of his hipbone. Hermann closes his eyes and shivers happily and Newt eases his way over to the tender flesh in the crease of his leg.

He shivers; stretches. Feels the stiffness of his healing body colour with pleasure at the contact. Newt hums and Hermann groans, the vibrations shivering deep inside him. He feels the plates in his pelvis shift and loosen; Newt pushes his legs apart and presses a kiss on his genital slit.

"Newt-" He chokes.

"Shh," the air tickles, his plates shift again and he _aches_ , grows slick.

"You should- be careful-"

"Oh, be quiet," Newt’s tongue flicks out, tastes him, "You're safe, and I’m fine."

His tongue is rough, wet. Hermann whines, feels his cock start to slip free- "Newton-"

"Okay, okay," Newt gives him one last, sweet, _dangerous_ lick. Kisses the tip of his emerging cock and wipes his mouth theatrically. He slides over and lies down beside him, and kisses him; Hermann can taste his own fluids on his mouth.

"You have to be careful," Hermann mumbles.

Newt kisses him again, curling up closer. Hermann can feel his cock press eagerly into the curve of his body, the damp tip brushing over an eyespot. Soft skin, wetness, the blur of light and dark. Another soft, messy kiss- hungry; as though Newt wants to drink him in, sweet and whole.

Hermann closes his eyes, basks in the warmth- Newt's hands skating over his back, legs tangling with his, mouth sliding against his. The comfort of touch, the solid weight of him, the heat easing the ache of old wounds.

It's such a relief- not simply the intimacy, but the living presence of him, solid and real and- a comfort, a safe place when his body feels brittle and frail, and the world outside a faceless blur of hostility. Newt's arms a cradle for him to rest in, close his eyes, feel _home_.

Newt rolls on his back, grabs a tub of slick cream from the bedside table and slicks up his fingers. He shivers, tucking his legs up and reaching down. Newton catches his eyes, and grins- and that smile, that wonderful, brilliant smile, sets a sun blazing in Hermann's chest. A moment where he can believe, for all the difficulty of the present, that things will be better soon.

Hermann rolls over, kisses him hungrily, fingers spread and mapping over his chest, claws extending just enough to tickle. Newt smiles again, purely happy. One finger- now two- buried inside his own body.

Hermann touches his hands, the clench of the tight rim of muscle, with the back of his hand. For a moment, he longs for the softness of his human hands, the protective sheathes of flesh over his claws- so it could be his fingers in Newt’s body. His cock twitches, slides fully free from his slit; the roughness of his skin as it presses against his abdomen, the chill of the damp air on his newly-emerged skin- he shudders with pleasure.

Newt squirms happily, rubbing himself against Hermann; Hermann pulls him close eagerly- the _softness_ of his body, the tenderness of his belly, his inner thighs where they trap his legs and one tail between them. Hermann draws his tail out slowly and Newt groans at the sliding roughness of his skin, the faint scratch of his spur.

There’s a faint, wet sound as Newt draws his fingers out, gets up on his knees and straddles him. His hand brushes over Hermann’s cock; Hermann can feel every whorl of his fingertips, the faint scrape of his soft nails.

"Newt-" He croaks.

Newt smiles, eagerly, "Like what you see?"

"Condom." Hermann growls, scrabbling in the bedside drawer and grabbing a handful of foil packets.

Newt rolls his eyes. "Fine," he tears one open, and starts unrolling it over Hermann's cock. The not-quite-there sensation of the thin rubber, the warmth of Newt's fingers soaking through to his skin-

"There, happy?" And before Hermann can protest, this is hardly for _his_ health, he lines himself up and slowly- _slowly oh so slowly_ works his way down.

Any protest is lost in a choked groan and Hermann's back arches, almost throwing Newt off, his hands clenching to knots to keep from clawing at the mattress.

Newt kisses him, mouth and chin and throat, breath panting hot, body open and eager for him and Hermann reaches down and grabs his hips, rich full handfuls to guide him all the way down-

Newt shivers, braces his hands on Hermann's chest and starts moving, little circles at first, rocking and clenching and freeing one hand to fist his own cock. When Hermann opens his eyes, Newt's smiling, smiling and something's wrong- "Newton-"

"S'okay," He changes rhythm; deeper, sweet. Hermann moans, "'s fine."

He reaches up a hand, and Newt catches it gently, pushing him back down, "You're crying."

"Nah I'm not, I'm fine." Newt kisses the hollow of his throat, "Just sweat dude."

Is it? Is Newt's voice thicker than usual, is that smile more tremulous? "I thought-"

"Shh, it's fine babe." He clenches down on him, rolls his hips and Hermann jerks up and groans low and deep, all other thoughts gone as the world narrows down to the final singularity of orgasm. He feels Newt clench around him, and keens at the almost unbearable _friction_ -

Newt lands almost on top of him, as he shivers and gasps, trying to catch his breath, his body starting to register its complaints at this exertion of healing tissue. Newt’s arms coil around him, warm comfort and he murmurs happily, feeling Newt’s damp face press into the crook of his neck.

 

* * *

 

 

Hermann is warm in his arms, shivering happily as the shakes work their way out. Newt can taste him on his lips, and Newt hesitates for a moment before wiping his mouth regretfully, wanting to keep- some part, some evidence-

It seems absurd to think about Kaiju Blue poisoning now, insane to be worrying about bodily fluids after seeing-

The claws. The teeth.

Newt closes his eyes, tries to push the thought, the – images away- he doesn’t want to see, he can’t do it again, he _can’t-_

His hand brushes the carved-up hollow of Hermann’s side and freezes.

The claws, the _blood_ , the horrible wet sounds of those _teeth_ digging hungrily into Hermann’s side- _eating him alive_ \- his _screams_ -

Newt screws his eyes shut, buries his face in Hermann’s neck and tries to breathe in short, shallows gasps. He can hide his tears in Hermann’s neck- he has to choke his sobs as well.

Hermann’s breathing evens out, deepens in sleep. Newt tries to relax, let his mind go back without letting any- other thoughts in. Nothing for Hermann to see if they slip into each other’s dreams again.

He hopes Hermann’s dreams are sweet, if only he can get some _sleep_.

 

* * *

 

 

Hermann keeps his head low as he enters Mission Control, eyes fixed on the computer display ahead of him, as though if he concentrates hard enough, everyone else will too, and stop staring at him. He digs himself deeper in his coat, the only piece of clothing he can still wear like this, and forces himself to go in.

The room is full, all displays are on; Newt is hovering somewhere but Hermann doesn’t dare look for him. His skin crawls with the urge to dig himself into a corner, blend into the wall and _disappear._

 _We need you, doctor_.

He grits his teeth and forces himself forwards. Tendo shifts over to let him sit down, gives him a small, sympathetic smile. The display is shockingly clear, but shows little but darkness, and the Jaeger floodlights digging deeper into the Pacific.

“Sit rep.” The bluish glow of the light digs deep creases in Hansen’s face. He doesn’t so much as look at Hermann.

“All good Marshall,” Raleigh’s voice comes clear and sharp despite the distance, “No sign of anything in the Breach- or those three in the Pacific either.”

“Good.” He nods stiffly, “Get in, see what’s going on, smash as much as you can and _get back in one piece_. We don’t want-“ He stops, swallows, “We _can’t_ lose anyone else.”

“We have no intention of losing her, Marshall.” Mako’s voice comes in. “We won’t be leaving her again.”

Hermann doesn’t look away from the display, the faint otherworldly glow of the Breach just visible in the cameras. He can feel Herc’s eyes boring into his back, “Anything from outside? Any other- surprises?”

Hermann shakes his head. The Breach is brighter than before, glowing with power from the atomic Throat. Hermann lifts a hand to enlarge the image and feels more than hears the intake of breath, the general shift away as they see his claws extend a little where he presses the pads of his fingers against the screen.

He locks his jaw and forces himself to continue, no matter how much he would like to curl up into a ball. His skin itches and burns at the attention- he digs himself further back in his raised hood, wishes he had sleeves that could fit his arms, and gloves to hide his hands-

But then, he had hidden for twenty years, and look what it had cost them.

Pentecost had trusted him; he repeats to himself. He had ordered Hermann to carry on. They _needed_ him. How could he hide if they needed him?

Hermann closes his eyes, catches his breath and carries on working, getting a clearer view of the open Breach and trying to ignore the eyes that follow every motion of his four arms, the gasps as he snags a claw on the edge of the table and it bites in- extending fully and drawing a deep groove in the metal.

“Keep your eyes on your stations!” Hansen snaps, “Gottlieb, stop destroying the furniture.”

“Yes sir,” The order is a relief, although the ‘Gottlieb’ stings; a reminder that he will not be ‘doctor’ again until Cambridge decides whether or not a doctorate issued to a Kaiju is valid.

The Jaegers are approaching the Breach- Lady Danger, Scimitar Grey, Keter Dios. Just three sent to succeed where eight had failed. Hermann clenches his fists, and this time the tension has nothing to do with any eyes on him.

After their last two ventures in the Anteverse, the mechanics have been able to rig up cameras that will _work_ in there. The grainy, half-faded footage from two years ago was bad enough, but this-

In a few minutes, he will be looking into the pits for the first time in twenty years. A superstitious fear screams at him to run, that the Masters will be able to reach through the screen and seize him-

He swallows, flexes his hands and lets his claws dig into his them just enough for the pain to ground him. He wishes, deeply and fervently, that Newton was beside him.

And then, although he had not as much as turned around, he is. A hand slipping inside his coat to rest, warm and comforting, on his shoulder. Hermann drags his eyes off the screen and gives Newt a grateful smile.

Which fades almost at once, “What are you _wearing_?” He hisses.

Newt just shrugs, smiling cockily- or, trying to smile cockily, but there’s something wrong with it that Hermann can’t quite place. “Hey, they all expected a show, I just gave them a bit more of one.”

For all of Newt’s frankly unprofessional outfits, this one is absurd. He’s given up on a shirt entirely, and is wearing a low-cut sleeveless vest which leaves very little to the imagination, especially the tattoos. “Is this some absurd attempt at misplaced solidarity?” No wonder he’d been in his jacket all day, Hermann would never have let him out like this.

Newt pulls a face, “My solidarity is _never_ misplaced-“

“Incoming drop!” Herc interrupts, glaring at them.

Any more words tangle up in Hermann’s throat and choke him. The glowing hole in the world fills Lady Danger’s cameras. Hermann digs his feet into the cold floor and is suddenly, absurdly grateful for Newt’s insane show of solidarity- a tiny, feeble gesture, screaming into the jaws of- of-

Of what he is about to face. After twenty years of dread, and uncounted eons of terror. Newt finds his hand and Hermann squeezes it gratefully, shivering in a room made stiflingly hot by so many people.

The surreal colours of the Breach are strangely soothing, the cameras flickering a little uncertainly at this onslaught of unrecognisable light and pattern and for a moment- Hermann remembers rising through the throat, twenty years ago, the Orders beginning their slow erosion from his mind.

And perhaps, in the whispers that had been all there had been of him- flattened and crushed into the peripheries of his own mind- he had recognised that this was a good thing, that this strange non-place between worlds would be the pathway to freedom, and this kinder, more loving world.

It seems obscene to be seeing it like this- to be going _back_ -

“Gottlieb!” Hermann starts as the Marshall’s voice cuts in, his claws screaming against the metal, cutting grooves in the concrete, “I _said_ , how does this compare to your calculations?”

“I- I don’t know,” Hermann draws up the readings from his sensors and starts flicking through them quickly, “I think- it is stable. The parameters are the same as our external readings, nothing is affecting it from our side or- or theirs.”

Hansen nods stiffly, “Keep an eye on them, tell me if they plan any more dirty tricks.”

Hermann nods, snags Newt’s arm and pulls him down to prevent him saying anything. “I do not want you sent out.” As wretched as this is, the thought of doing it alone- surrounded by all those people staring at him-

The Breach opens on the far side, a great, blazing mouth, and Hermann chokes a whimper.

“Brace for their tractor beam-“ Raleigh starts, then breaks off with a shout.

The camera blurs; a wild kaleidoscope of dull colour and darkness. There is no beam, nothing to slow them, and the Jaegers free-fall from the mouth of the Breach. Hermann has a brief glimpse of a deep, endless pit- then the display is filled with a rough, crumbling wall, the microphones screaming steel on stone as the Jaegers dig their hands into the cliff-face to slow themselves down.

Everything is a grey brown blur, the screaming readouts quieting as the Jaegers slow. The cameras are blinded by falling stone and dust, shaking and juddering and two go blank as falling debris or vibrations crush them or shake something loose.

“Sir! Ground-“ Kal Hussain’s voice rises, then is lost in the incredible crunch of landing. Hermann’s teeth lock in sympathy as the Jaegers sway and fall to their knees from the force of the impact, an avalanche of dust and dirt and rocks raining down on them.

Hansen shoves past him, grabs the microphone, “Sitrep now!”

“Sir-“ Mako’s voice comes in, a little fainter, but still discernible. “There was nothing to slow our fall this time. We- I believe we are near the bottom of the trench we saw, where the power for the Breach is generated.”

“Hell,” Hansen looks at Hermann, and for once, there is no recrimination in his eyes, “Doctor, can you move the Breach? They won’t be able to get back-“

Hermann is already moving. The Throat itself is locked, but he should be able to move the Breach itself some distance- “Can they climb back up?”

“Did you hear that? Can you get back up there?”

“I think so,” Raleigh this time, “There’s a kind of slope on the far side-“

“How long will it take you to open the Breach somewhere they can reach?”

Hermann swallows, focuses on the numbers, links them up to Diane's lab so she and her techs can have a look at it. “Some hours- we need to triangulate the new position and see how far we can expand it-“

“Okay,” Hansen takes a breath. Hermann takes a breath; the whole room seems to remember to breathe. “Okay, what can you see? What’s coming?”

“It is very hard to see,” Mako’s voice comes in, “The dust and- I believe it is a lot darker than before-“

The display clears a little and Hermann can see faint, golden light streaking a thick, cloudlike haze above them, “Can you see that?” Kel calls.

The Marshall is looking at him; Hermann tries to speak, but the words are lost in a thick croak. The light slips into his mind and touches off a thousand memories-

- _his paws heavy and sticky with gore, as he climbs free of his pen, looking up into that faded, far-away light-_

_-a faint ray for him to curl up in, a slightly warmer place in the cold so freezing that even now, twenty years gone, his bones still ache from it-_

_The constant, unwavering glow marking out the pits, the pens, the living factories. The patterns and contours of his vicious, maddened home._

“Doctor Gottlieb,” Hermann starts, the world, _his world_ , snapping back into focus. Hansen is leaning towards him, and for a moment, his face softens, “what is that?”

“The sun or- the suns-“ Hermann swallows, “We saw them in the first recording.”

Hansen watches him for another moment, then nods. “Just sunlight,” he assures them.

The camera shifts, the dusts falling free, and more light comes through- Hermann blinks, leans in and tries to make something out of the gloom, tries to recognize something-

The Jaegers are on a ledge, still some way above the line of the pits- where the pits _had been_.

The great, impossible space of the pits has been completely gutted. Hermann can still make out, here and there, the outlines of each pen- the crushed monument of the fighting area. The _sight_ of it- the right side completely gone, the walls half melted and a fraction of their true size. Its shadow had drowned the pits, pressed down on all of them-

Above them are the shattered fragments of the machinery of flesh and blood- a few broken stumps where the hideous structure had once been strung across the sky. Spinning and weaving and birthing screaming, terrified creatures and _crawling_ with the Masters.

The memories are so real they almost blot out his eyes, his hands tremble at the screen, tracing out the lines of what had been, what- it seems _impossible_ to even think it- is now _gone_.

The light from above is pure, unshadowed; the rigging of muscle and bone is gone. The Master’s platforms are faint outlines far below, torn down from around the Breach and thrown into the abyss by- as he focuses the feed- huge claws.

There are marks of them everywhere- the walls are rutted with them, the remains of the factories have teethmarks and even entire teeth embedded in them, the walls of the pits have been crushed and flattened to their foundations- and Hermann finds himself trying to find the walls of his old pen, among the destruction.

Lady Danger climbs down and hits the ground heavily and the highest walls don’t come up to her ankles. The great space is utterly empty, torn and stripped and smashed until almost nothing remains.

“What the hell happened?” Raleigh’s voice is unsteady.

Hansen looks at Hermann. Newt looks at Hermann. Hermann cannot speak. It should be a relief. It _is_ a relief- somewhere inside him, buried under the shock.

It makes no sense, this shock- he had _known_ the pit had been destroyed after operation Pitfall, he had _known_ -

But he hadn’t seen it. He had not believed, _could_ not believe, that it was gone. That the nightmares could be banished, the horrors destroyed, that he could be looking down on the pit and see only an empty space. The ancient wreckage of a long-lost- a long- _won_ \- war.

The Jaegers start to move, their lights flaring out into the dull darkness at the floor of the chamber- the floor of the _pit._ They start and there is a blurred moment of confusion as shouts ring out and weapons are powered up.

“Hold-“ Mako interrupts and the chaos resolves itself to- the great shadow of a Kaiju, just out of reach of the lights, “Wait.” Lady Danger steps forwards and slowly, little by little, the lights pick out the enormous head of a Kaiju- bigger than Trespasser, probably even bigger than Slattern.

And it is dead. The flesh around its face and eyes has been eaten away, huge teeth made even longer by the loss of gums- standing stark against the bone of its jaw- whatever it had been biting, the Masters had had time to fight back.

“Sir.” Raleigh starts, then breaks off.

Hansen looks at Hermann, and Hermann looks at Newt.

Newt is staring at the screen, open mouthed, eyes so wide Hermann can see the pale whites around them, “I-“ he closes his mouth, swallows, “I didn’t- know. I didn’t think- that could happen-“

He looks almost frightened. Hermann feels it too. The thought that they had done this- that _Newt_ had done this. Had been the catalyst for destruction on this scale- against creatures so _powerful_ -

He wonders if the creators of the atomic bomb had felt this fear too- the realization that they had put into effect something so- huge.

He shivers, almost afraid of the clawing triumph inside him- as though if he believed in it, it would be snatched away.

When the Jaegers are some way in, they turn and through the thin, wavering mist, they can see the heavy slope of smashed machinery and rotting flesh, leading up to where the Masters' palaces have been so utterly destroyed not even a trace of them remained. And the Breach, gaping above, silent and serene.

Hermann swallows, his hands are shaking and he has to clench them twice before they cooperate, turning to the numbers of the Breach. They need to open it lower- somewhere the Jaegers can reach-

He pauses a moment, glances around. Everyone's attention is on the screen, watching as the Jaegers pace their slow way through the tangle of ruins, the dead foundations of the pit.

They have won. It doesn't seem real. It had felt real after Operation Pitfall, the tragic deaths, the last desperate attempt- it had been an emotional watershed, an outpouring of emotion after so much tension.

It doesn't feel like it now. Hermann keeps glancing at the screen, at the shattered remains of the Anteverse, waiting for _something_ to happen, for an attack, the revelation that this was a trap-

He catches Newt's eye. Newt tries to smile, but he's shaken too. "Fuck those guys, right?" His voice trembles through the bravado.

Hermann tries a smile; it feels strange, "Yes."

"Focus on getting them back, Gottlieb," Hansen's voice cuts in, and Hermann turns back to his numbers.

"Holy- sir can you see this?" The darkness of the pit is lightening a little, faded golden light coming from somewhere ahead, "Can you hear us?"

"We can hear you," Hansen grabs the microphone, "What have you got?"

"Just- I don't know how much you're getting, but-"

Tendo adjusts the cording, it's getting scratchy the further they go from the Breach, "Have to set up some kind of forward station," he mutters.

"Belay that until we've got everyone home-" and Hansen breaks off, Tendo's hands still, because they can see it now. 

"Oh." It is little more than a breath from Hermann.

It makes sense of course; they had to put the bodies _somewhere_. He had seen the pits, the fights, ten dead for every one that went through the Breach, _at least_.

Hermann just never thought he would see them all in one place.

The Jaegers move slowly, from shock and from the effort of picking their way through the massive field of bones. It goes on for- well he cannot see the walls of this place, but there seems to be no end. The Jaegers' floodlights pick out the distant peaks of backbones and horns, smashed teeth and broken claws. Their great feet crunch on the ground; and Scimitar Grey looks down at a fine carpet of tiny bones.

Hermann's back itches, every old scar aches and a huge gulf opens in his stomach because… Did he do this? How many did he fight in the pit? They all blurred into a timeless flurry of teeth and blood. One, two, three- sometimes five at a time. How _many_ in that eternity? _How many did he kill?_

The world sways, he grips the tabletop and feels his claws dig in; his stomach heaves and the old wound in his side _aches_ nauseatingly- all those _bones_ \- his entire species-

All of them pitted against each other until only one was left- a victor atop a throne of bones.

Newt gets the bin in front of him just in time, he retches and no coat, no warmth is enough to melt the cold inside him- so cold his bones lock with it and it hurts to _breath_. Newt rubs his back and he shudders, wants to pull away and curl into a ball and disappear. He doesn't deserve this kindness. He has the deaths of his entire species on his hands- no matter if it was the Masters who forced him- he was still their tool.

He wipes his mouth, forces his head up; Hansen is looking at him.

"What was that?" The speakers crackle.

"What is this place?" Hansen's voice is softer than usual.

Hermann swallows, "A- graveyard. I think." He shudders.

"From Operation Pitfall?"

Hermann shakes his head, "They made us- made them kill- in the pits-" His throat closes, his teeth lock, he chokes.

Newt rubs his back and Hermann no longer cares, he leans over and rests his head on Newt's chest, desperately and pathetically grateful for the warmth and solidness of him. "Were those- the little ones- like you?" Newt whispers.

Hermann turns his head into Newt's chest, feels the heat of his skin through the thin shirt. Nods.

"Doctor." Hermann raises his head; Hansen is very close to him, "I need to know if you can do this. We _have_ to get them home."

_We need you, doctor._

Hermann forces himself to straighten, "Yes sir," he tears his eyes from the screen, the images. But he can still hear them- every so often comes the thousand lurid little crunches of snapping bones and his stomach lurches.

"Can you please try and avoid that?" Hansen doesn't look too well himself.

"Believe me Herc, we're trying," Raleigh voice is strained.

The far Breach is hard to manipulate, the static Throat is sluggish and unwilling to respond. This is going to be slow work. Diane and the others are working to get a reasonable map of the far side- see how far they can move it-

"We are approaching the light source," Mako's voice comes through- it's weaker as they move further away from the Breach.

"Get your weapons ready," Hansen leans in, "In case they just moved out a way."

"Got you- what's that?"

Hermann heard it to, the dull beat of the Jaeger's steps are oddly muffled now; Scimitar's searchlight streams down and sparks off thousands of little hillocks- gleaming gold and brown.

"Doctor, do those mean anything to you?"

Hermann leans in as Keter bends down and pulls up a giant handful of- whatever it is, holding it in Scimitar's light. For a moment, he draws a blank at the soft brown puffballs, trailing dark earth under them; then a vague memory surfaces.

_A small, soft thing clinging out an existence in the brightest corner of the pit, exterior soft between his teeth, crunchy within. It had tasted good, filling and strong and the flickering thoughts of him had mourned the lack of more._

"I think they are some kind of- puffball, or plant growth," he hazards, "We did not usually find them in the pits."

"We don't need a botany lesson- are they dangerous?" Hansen frowns.

Hermann shrugs helplessly- how can he use himself as a measuring point? "I ate it once, it didn't do anything and it tasted pleasant, does that help?"

Hansen sighs, "Keep an eye on the sensors in case these things release spores- you're still sealed in after the dive?"

"Affirmative."

"Don't unseal." He sighs again, "Try and get some readings for atmosphere if you can do it without compromising yourselves."

The puffballs are everywhere as the Jaegers head towards the light- deep gold, gleaming off walls carpeted with the growths, and when Scimitar looks up, the ceiling is covered in them too.

It's also sloping down.

"The Kaiju must have come through here," Kel's voice reassures their unspoken fear, Scimitar's beam glancing over the deep ruts and banks- a trail and of destruction leading towards the golden glow, "The roof can't get too low-"

And then, almost without warning, they turn a corner and the light blinds them.

Hermann closes his eyes half out of instinct- after the gloom of the pits and tunnels the unshielded light of the suns is almost too much to bear; the cameras registering only gold for a few moments until they can adjust to the glare.

The sky is a deep reddish gold, faint clouds racing across it but never dimming the light of the cluster of suns. The thermometer registering outside temperatures jumps from nearly zero to a twenty Celsius and the humidity gauge skyrockets.

In the distance, the suns are glowingly reflected in a great sea that stretches to the horizon- still as glass and blazing with sunlight. Around them, the world rears in great spiraling columns- some reaching far above even the Jaegers, many broken and crushed from where the Kaiju must have fought their way out.

The air is still, moisture sparkles on everything; the world is painted in shades of brown and gold and dark red. Faint shimmers of unidentifiable substance dance in the distance, among the titanic stalks of growth.

No one speaks as the Jaegers take their first steps on the surface of the Anteverse. No one says a word. There are no possible words.

A little way into the maze of stalks, they come across the body of a Kaiju- and this one is no skeleton. It lies jack-knifed along the ground, fetched up against a huge skyscraper-sized column, a trail of destruction marking where it had fallen and skidded. Its bones stand stark against its skin, muscles sunken and withered marking where starvation had finally killed it.

Its body is already being covered in brown growth. Puffballs colonising this new source of protein and starting to build a new stalagmite to join the existing forest. A large bitemark nearby suggests the dying creature had still tried to stave off its hunger in its last moments.

Hermann's hands go dead on the keys, and for a moment, he cannot look away from the tableau. For a moment, he cannot even think.

Food. Endless mountains of food. Food enough to feed every member of the pit- alive or dead- forever. The forest of puffballs stretch from horizon to horizon, tower high enough to dwarf even the Jaegers. His mouth waters, his tongue flicks out.

He had spent so much of his life on the knife-edge of starvation. He had so often come so close to ending up like the poor wretch lying there. He had seen so many die from hunger or from being too weak to fight.

And outside- _just outside_ \- had been enough food for them to gorge themselves senseless.

The cruelty of the Masters had always seemed so impersonal and aloof it had been difficult to feel anything but fear. But the sheer _pettiness_ of this burns his throat with rage.

"They let us starve." He's not quite aware of the words until they are out of his mouth. "There was- all of this- and _they let us starve_ -"

Newt puts a hand on his shoulder, Hermann barely feels it. He's on his feet, the world swimming around him, "They could have- it was all _right there_ -"

He's not sure who he's even speaking to, everything is a blur, and all he can see is the crumpled body of the Kaiju- starved to death in the midst of unbelievable plenty.

The body. The dead. The skeletons piling up thousands upon millions until Hermann wants to open his own throat for the shame of survival. He staggers, the wound in his side screaming as the skin pulls taut.

"Sit down doctor."

"There was nothing to eat-" The words come from somewhere else- some Breach of outrage and horror opened deep within him, "We had to eat each other- _they let us starve_ -"

A hand lands on his shoulder, two more curl around him- grounding him. The world shudders and slowly comes into focus. Marshall Hansen's eyes are level with his. His hand solid and steady on him.

"Sit down doctor." He repeats, and gently pushes him down until his legs buckle and he slumps back into his chair.

Newt's arms steady him, and Hermann swallows, his hands shaking as he dares to look up at the screen. The Kaiju is gone, the endless forest stretching on, broken only by the trail the living Kaiju had left.

"Everything okay?" They are far enough now that Raleigh's voice is distorted.

"Nothing for you to worry about."

"Okay, we're going to go a bit further then going back- we don't want to get lost here and it doesn't look like there's anything- Shit!"

They don't have time to get a clear image of the Kaiju before it's on them. It’s just a blur of claws and teeth and blue-black hide, moving so fast Keter only just has time to raise an arm to ward it off, claws biting into steel.

"Scimitar, get around it- Danger, back us up-"

"It's too narrow here to flank-"

"Get to the side, try to block it-"

Newt catches Hermann's eye, then lunges for the microphone, "Get away from it!"

Hansen wrenches it free, face hardening into a glare "This isn't the time-"

"With the Masters gone, it's got no reason to attack!" Newt tries to grab the microphone again; Hermann catches his arm to hold him still.

"Well it’s bloody well attacking isn't it-" Hansen snarls, "What are they supposed to do-"

"Sir," Hermann breaks in, trying to keep his the only calm voice in the din, "Newton is right- the Jaegers might have intruded on territory- or threatened a kill- we don't know."

Hansen pauses, the sounds coming from the Anteverse grow more desperate- shouts, orders- the crunch and scream of metal and keratin, then "Get away from there."

"Sir! Are you seriously-"

"There is no one for you to protect on that side!" Hansen shouts, "And we can't air-lift you out if you're hurt. Get away from there now!"

The world in the cameras is a confused whirl of gold and brown and black; the speakers filled with deafening roars turned muddy from the increasingly bad reception. The three Jaegers backing off step by step back towards the entrance to the pits.

For a moment, Hermann wonders if it'll work, if this Kaiju isn't just mad enough to attack everything that moves.

And Hansen is right. If anything breaks, they are a long way from any help.

The Kaiju roars, rears and lashes out with a mantis-like forelimb- just short of striking Keter- then it drops back on its haunches, growling.

The Jaegers take two more cautious steps back, and the Kaiju doesn't follow; it glares at them- one eye gone in some battle, its muzzle pitted and scoured as though by flame and acid- then snorts. It snaps its jaws at them, rakes the ground with its claws and takes a bite out of the nearest puffball tree, crushing it with one bite.

"It's showing off," Newt gives a weak grin.

"Jaegers, try not to look too big," Hansen calls, and there's shaky laughter at the poor joke.

Finally, the Kaiju seems satisfied they know it is bigger and nastier than them, gets up and turns away, back into the jungle of columns. It pauses after a few steps, lowing its head to meet the half dozen smaller Kaiju- less than half its size, smaller than category ones- rushing to meet it, playing around its legs, nipping at the great scything limbs. The Kaiju lowers its head and nuzzles them.

"That's why it attacked us," Mako's voice breaks the silence. Hermann and Newt nod; Hermann watches, hypnotized, as the infants trot away into the forest, the parent snorting and ushering them.

"You did this," he says softly to Newt, "You freed them,"

"I-" Newt’s mouth opens, "I didn't know-"

"That hardly matters," and the joy of it, the trembling joy of the sight of those little Kaiju- natural born young, happy and free and safe-

He takes Newt’s hands in his and squeezes tight, "They are free- the Masters are _gone_!" He swallows, can barely believe it, "They are having _children_ \- and to think I wanted you to-" the memory closes his throat, after so long in darkness he hadn’t been able to believe there would ever be light.

Newt mouths nothing for a moment, "It's not your fault," he croaks, "We didn't know-"

"But you _believed!_ ” Fortune favours the brave, and dear god it favoured Newt- _Gott_ bless him forever for this gift to his kind, "You did it anyway," Hermann pulls him into a hug, as hard and tight as he could manage, "You freed them- You are a hero."

And he kisses Newt again, feeling Newt mumble protests that he never wanted to be a hero, he wanted to be a _rockstar_ -

"All right," Hansen puts in, "Enough exploring, I want everyone back to that boneyard and on Earth as fast as possible. That was one miracle too many. How's the Breach looking, Doctor?"

Diane and her crew have mapped a potential option. Hermann carefully checks the coordinates and starts sending the new commands through the Breach. "A matter of hours, Marshall."

"Good," He nods, then turns to Newt, "Doctor Geiszler, don't you have something else to do?"

"Sir?"

"I gave you orders doctor. We need to see results."

Hermann glances up at Hansen, puzzled; Newt hadn't said anything to him.

"Right, yeah." Newt looks pale, but he smiles at Hermann. "It's nothing, some samples I've gotta look at."

"Don't put it off any longer," Hermann smiles, and squeezes his hand again.

"I'm off, I'm off." He’s still smiling, but it doesn't look quite right; he puts a hand on Hermann's shoulder, "You gonna be okay?"

The Breach spasms and spits out a lot of nonsense numbers, Hermann sighs and starts putting together a different approach.

"Sure you are," Newt pulls his hood down a little, and presses a kiss to the back of his head. Hermann blinks, but when he can drag his attention away from the screen and look after Newt- he's already gone.

 

* * *

 

He's okay. He's okay. Newt's legs carry him pretty well out of the room and into the corridors, straight and steady and not letting him turn to shout anything back at the rangers and technicians who don't think much of his personal style or relationship choices.

He's okay. He's done this, like, a _million_ times before. He's spent most of the _war_ doing this. It drove Hermann up the wall. He can do this one more time- just once-

The lab door is in front of him before he really realises it, and a huge knot clogs his throat at the sight of it. The metal has been cleaned and mended, but nothing can hide the huge rents in the steel from those claws those claws _those claws_ -

The edges are still sharp on his hand; it shakes a little as he pushes the door open.

Their lab is a ruin.

Oh, the worst of the damage has been cleaned up, but Newt can still see the signs everywhere. You could tear this place down and built a resort and he would still _see_ them-

Their stuff is gone; anything that survived the battle had been so contaminated by Kaiju Blue that it had to be incinerated. Fifteen years worth of stuff they had dragged from one Shatterdome to another.

The place is raw and empty. The claw marks on the wall are bright and stark. The concrete floor still stained faintly blue from when- where-

 _Hermann screaming, teeth in his belly_ -

Newt doesn't realise he's moving until his back hits the wall and _fuck_ that's scarred too, chunks of concrete knocked out by something hitting it with impossible force- his boots crunch on broken glass someone hasn't swept up- and the _smell_ -

It's still there oh god it's _still_ there he can smell the blood all over the floor and the walls and _his hands_ and he can _taste it_ and please fuck no fuck please-

Newt closes his eyes and tries to hold it together- or at least keep it from leaking through to Hermann. He wishes he had his meds but that's stupid because he took them this morning and anyway _they don't help-_

He opens his eyes, the room is still stark and pale, stripped naked so Newt can see the scars. He takes a deep breath. He doesn't have to stay here; just open the cold store, get his samples, go _somewhere- anywhere_ else and do enough to make Herc happy and burn the rest.

He takes a step, another, the silence stretches ahead unbroken and the space between his shoulders itch as though the Infiltrators were still there, waiting and maddened to strike.

The door to the cold store is absurdly unmarked, and if he puts his hand on the handle and for a moment he can try and pretend. The last few weeks have only been a particularly hideous nightmare and he can just turn around and there will be the lab as it was- all their junk, the idiotic bit of tape he put on the floor, Hermann scrawling away at his backboards-

He turns the handle, and that world shatters.

The smell hits him first, raw and overwhelming, striking straight through his nose to the panic centres of his brain- the hot sick reek of wretched, violent death, Kaiju Blue and Kaiju gut and Kaiju crushed bone-

And the bodies.

In a heartbeat, he is back in the lab, four weeks ago.

The screams ring in his ears- the _smell_ \- the blur of claws and teeth and the bodies slumped and dying and the dead everywhere. The Hive howling inside him like a broken radio and the obscene hands of the Masters inside the Infiltrators.

And Hermann, Hermann fighting and mad and screaming and held down as the teeth tear deeper and deeper into his side; blood streaming out and his _screaming_ high and desperate and oh god oh god he's dying he's dying _he’s being eaten alive in front of him_ and Newt can't even move or do anything and by the time he reaches him he's still and already going cold and the Blue burns his hands as he tries to wake him and the bodies, the two dozen bodies on their shelves in the cold store- dead and still and cold and eyes open and blind and staring at him- all of them staring at him. The world drowns in Kaiju Blue and he can hear screaming and the ghost pain of teeth at his belly and claws in his back- a fourth arm he doesn't have shattered and hanging loose-

Somehow, Newt isn't sure how, he staggers out of this nightmare. The sight of the bodies is scoured in but they're gone for now in the comparative relief of the lab. Newt curls up in the corner smelling of the shadows of the dead and the stink of cleaning chemicals, buries his head between his knees and screws his eyes closed like a child, and pretends, just for a while, not to exist.

 

* * *

 

Eventually, he has to move. He’s shaking and his face is damp, although he doesn’t remember crying. It’s as though there's an inexhaustible well of misery inside him, and nothing he can do can run it dry. He hugs the wall as he goes, shoving the door to the cold store closed by the tips of his fingers so he doesn't have look inside.

The lab is freezing, he's so cold. Newt shoves his way out of the lab without even bothering to check the corridor is empty, shoving his glasses off and wiping his face roughly.

He doesn't care where he's going- _anywhere but here_. His feet absently pacing out the old familiar route from a thousand late nights, so many all-too early mornings; right out of the lab, second right again, down the corridor and down the steps to-

To the cafeteria.

Newt stops short; the place isn't as busy as it used to be, with the big dining room back online, but there are still enough people here to make his skin crawl as they all turn to look at him.

His skin crawls, as though the Kaiju on his skin are trying to huddle under the comfort of his clothes and hide. He ignores the glares and whispers, stares ahead blankly and lets his legs carry him over to the coffee machine.

Mug. The worn button of the machine. Three shots of espresso. The smell so familiar it turns his stomach. Kaiju Blue and coffee. The chalkdust of Hermann's blackboards, the hum of computers. The clutter and endless arguments filling the lab. Hermann's face; screwed up, shouting over his music, trying to sneer and failing utterly. Struggling to hold back a smile when Newt finally got him; eyes crinkled up despite himself, bright and-

What colour were they?

The- the light in the lab had always been bad; it was hard to make precise colours out at that distance- hadn't they been brown? Or black maybe? Or really dark blue-

He can't remember.

He will never see him again.

His legs buckle, he drops the mug and it smashes on the floor. He's down before any of it even registers and the _horror_ and _grief_ of it roars through him. Somewhere deep inside a tiny part of him is screaming that this makes _no sense_ but it doesn’t help and the rest of him is just- caught, caught between Otachi's teeth and the world shatters and he's kneeling in blood and the screams shake the walls and Hermann is dead is dead _is dead_ -

“Geiszler?”

Newt starts, glares up furious at the hesitant face of the technician as all the tortured pain and wild terror surges out and for a moment- never mind that he barely knows the man- he _hates_ him utterly. He hates a half-concerned, half-disgusted, all-pitying look on his face, the not quite outstretched hand, the fact that everyone is _looking_ at him.

“F-fuck off,” he tries to snarl through his tears, his voice cracking.

He hates his voice, he hates that that’s all he can think of. He wants to scream something sharp and cutting that will make them all _stay away_ , he wants to make them pull away in fear, he wants to claw his own skin off and bare new teeth and flash new claws and-

He chokes, sobs, cannot hold back the tears.

The man recoils, disgust overcoming pity, “Ok, whatever.”

He takes a step back, threatening to blend back into the faceless mass of stares and scorn and revulsion. Newt bares his- frail, useless- teeth, “No wonder they killed you,” his voice is high and screeching, and he doesn’t care, clenching his fists and he just wants to _hurt_ \- take the wretched, hideous feeling inside him and make _them_ feel it too.

The technician stops dead, “What the hell did you say?” The room is completely silent.

“You heard,” Newt gets up, his body thrumming with energy; all that ghastly horror pouring out inside of in, desperate to _hurt_ someone- anyone- “You’re fucking _useless_ \- what fucking good _are_ you?”

Several more technicians are standing, white with rage and Newt doesn’t _care_. He needs to stop- what is he _saying_? But the rest of him is too far gone. He stands, squares his shoulders, his tattoos raw and proud on his bare skin.

They hate him, they hated him even before this, so he’s just giving them the excuse. Newt sneers, let them hate him, he doesn’t care- anything, as long as he doesn’t have to feel this any more.

“Us!” The technician’s face contorts, “What about you- you little- _bastard_ -“

“Is that the best you can do?” Newt grins, grins and nothing is funny. “Are you the best now? Did all the clever techs get their faces ripped off-“

The scrape of benches, people getting up, the little voice in the back of Newt’s mind is desperately warning him he can’t _do_ this- he’s going to get horribly hurt-

Good.

“I mean, they weren’t _that_ clever, if they went in to get gutted-“

And that’s all, that’s the last straw; the man turns and lunges, “You little _Kaiju fucker-_ “

Newt roars- wordless, senseless- he closes quickly enough that he’s inside the man’s punch before it lands. The heat of him, the sound of breath and shouts push him and oh he wants to _hurt_ -

Deep inside him, something wakes. Stretches its claws and bellows and snarls inside him. It opens blue, blue eyes and bares its teeth, rising until it fills him completely with rage.

His clawless hands scratch red marks across the man’s face; he starts and steps back, more surprised than hurt, and for a moment, Newt is lost. Where are his claws? Where is his tail? He attacks with weapons he doesn’t have, throwing himself senselessly against the technician, trying to bite with a tiny mouth and useless, fragile teeth. He gets a mouthful of uniform and the man catches him and hauls him off, Newt’s nails scratching uselessly against his forearms, and hurls him into the coffeemaker.

He lands with a crash. All the air is knocked out of his lungs and the rage with it. He chokes, gasps, tries to breathe. The pain is bright across his back, and oh- it’s blissful to _feel_ something at last.

He looks up at the enraged face of the technician, his fist drawn back to land a blow to knock out all of Newt’s teeth.

It’s the best thing he's has seen all week.

The punch flies- then stops. Caught in a cage of long, sharp claws.

 

* * *

 

The man’s fist hits his hand with a dull _thump_ ; the force of it jars his arm, but Hermann holds him, interposing himself between Arthur and Newt.

God- what has Newton _done_? Arthur’s so furious he doesn’t even seem to notice, struggling to push past Hermann and trying to land another punch with his free hand. He catches that one too; Arthur snarls and tries to shove him, but Hermann still has two hands free, restraining him.

And then, _then_ Arthur sees him.

The anger tightening his eyes slides away, those eyes go wide, pale, he tries to step back but Hermann is still holding him tight.

The _fear_ in his eyes.

He can see it around them, the shock of the pilots at facing a Kaiju without a Jaeger, the staff stumbling back in horror-

But the technicians. The technicians who had seen their friends and colleagues torn apart by creatures just like him. The same claws, the same teeth. That same unbearable strength.

He lets Arthur go. He stumbles backwards, tripping over a bench in his desperation to _get away._

Hermann catches his breath; looking around at the rows of horrified faces. He wants to say- _look at me, this is me. I am still Hermann Gottlieb. I worked with you for years- we built the Jaegers together, we celebrated and mourned and hung on together through it all_ -

He says nothing; the terror in their eyes is enough to know it is useless. He bends down and struggles to help Newt up. His side blazing in protest. His leg trembling under the extra weight.

Newt stumbles up. His face is flushed and blotchy, his clothes spotted from the spilled coffee; he catches himself on the tabletop, rubs his back and winces.

Hermann scowls at him. God, does he have no _sense_? How could anyone be so _idiotic_ to look for trouble when it is so eagerly looking for them? “Come on,” he snaps, disgusted, grabbing his arm and hauling him out of the cafeteria.

 

* * *

 

The hand on his shirt, those claws, the tense set of those shoulders under his coat and oh god it's _him_ , he looks tired but okay; huddled in his coat, maybe leaning on his stick more than usual but oh it's him he's okay he's _alive_ and for a moment Newt can’t see beyond that, the rut of his mind scraping out _alive alive alivealivealive-_

Hermann turns, and his face is drawn and angry. It’s so familiar and strange, the expression he’s known for going on two decades now, on a face he’s only known, on and off, for not quite three years. "Newton, what did you think you were-"

He breaks off, anger fading for a moment. He steps back to meet him, stops him with one hand and tilts his face up to the light, "Have you been crying?"

"Nah," Newt plasters a smile on his face, rolls aching eyes, "I wasn't careful when I cleaned my hands in the lab- rubbed my eyes and wow- pain."

Hermann frowns at him another moment then sighs and shakes his head. "And you decided to go and take it out on the technicians." He steps back and Newt’s skin _aches_ for him, _please, don’t go_ ; “What you _said_ to them- _Gott_ , I wanted to hit you myself! After all that happened-“

Newt’s eyes track to the floor. The anger is all ashes and now he just feels sick- sick at himself, sick at his words, sick at the world. He wishes he’d stayed curled up in the lab. He wishes he’d never got up this morning. He wishes- fuck, he doesn’t know any more, nothing makes sense, everything is so broken and _hurting_ -

“Newton,” Hermann turns his face up again; he’s angry, but those strange- _so strange, exotic he’d once thought but that was before he’d known he would never see Hermann’s dark, sarcastic gaze again-_ black-blue-black eyes are soft, and his hand, when he tilts Newt’s face up again, is gentle. “This is not going to be easy for anyone- please, try not to make it any worse.”

Newt tries to turn away, look at anything but Hermann. That sad, disappointed gaze. He doesn’t want to make Hermann sad- why can’t he be angry? Newt deserves it; he’s such a fucking asshole, why couldn’t Hermann just yell at him like he used to?

“I know they are- harder on you,” Hermann strokes his cheek, “They are frightened of me, and they take it out on you, but you _cannot_ provoke them like this.”

Newt closes his eyes, cannot look at him anymore. “I’m sorry;”

“Tell that to Arthur, and the technicians.” Hermann sighs, “The Jaegers are back, they’re gathering everyone in the Shatterdome. Come on, you can apologise to them there.”

Newt can’t see how it can be much of one, how can he mean it if he barely understands why he did it in the first place? Just that everything hurt so much and he wanted to make the world feel like he did, just for a while. He nods anyway, “Sure.”

 

* * *

 

The Jaegers are still streaming gallons of water when they hurry into the Shatterdome proper, the endless, drawn out crashes and clanks ringing in their ears as they are slowly lowered to stand on the ground.

Newt walks over to the glowering technicians. Hermann watches long enough to make sure it isn’t going to descend into violence, then goes over to inspect the Jaegers.

The pilots are already out, eyes glazed and stumbling from spending too long in the Drift; Newt and Hermann stay back as they are mobbed by the staff, the hubbub almost drowning out the final crunches and bangs as the Jaegers settle.

They look drained. Hermann has seen long Drifts before, and can recognise the lopsided stumble of people uncertain how many limbs they had, how dim the world was through only one pair of eyes, the alien lightness of the world outside the Jaeger harnesses.

The record for the longest Drift was held by the Kaidenovskys, and they had spent a week in the IC unit checking for long-term damage. The six here haven't quite broken their record, but they've come close.

A handful of folding chairs and work stools are dug out and the pilots collapse on them; words slurring as they try and give their accounts, eyes wandering blindly around the rows of faces.

Ranger Mori's eyes drift- then lock on his. She blinks and draws in a breath, "Doctor Gottlieb," she murmurs.

Hermann crouches next to her, winces as his side stretches, "What is it?"

She doesn't answer at once, frowning at him but not- unlike almost everyone in the last few weeks- tensing as though expecting him to attack. "You were born there?" Her voice is hoarse.

Hermann blinks, then nods, "In the pits." The pits that are nothing but ruins now; the gaolers dead, the prisoners free. Maybe one day he can fully believe it.

She just gazes at him for another moment, until Hermann has to shift, uncomfortable at the scrutiny, his leg starting to ache; then she looks away. "I am sorry."

Hermann just nods again uncertainly, "Thank you?" he hazards.

Beckett leans against her, he looks more shaken than she does, pupils blown and red in the corner of his eyes where blood vessels have burst, "We didn't know-" his voice slurs, "That _place-_ and the _bodies_ -"

Hermann nods, now hoping desperately they will stop talking- the memories are raw and the _shame_ of it is a crawling, living presence inside him.

Raleigh must not have seen - or been able to read his expression; "How did you ever- that _place_ \- how did you _survive_?"

By the tips of his claws, the edges of his teeth, a mountain of the dead. Hermann chokes on the ashes.

"It would have been different if we‘d knew known," Mako manages; "Doctor Geiszler told us but we-"

"Didn't believe him." Raleigh finishes, their voices blending to one; he blinks again, eyes seeming to focus. "You did this, didn't you?"

Hermann‘s stomach clenches, but there is nothing left to come up, his legs tremble and for a moment he thinks he is about to fall- he deserves this accusation- he is the murderer he _deserves this_ -

But this isn't what they mean, "That weapon we took into the Breach with us- the disruptor- that was what did it?" Raleigh closes his eyes, "That‘s why they just- why they got away, right?"

Hermann nods, then, because Raleigh can't see him. "It was Newton's machine," he breaks in, because he doesn't deserve this accolade- he had told Newt to make a- a murdering virus; it was _Newton_ who-

He turns to find him, but Newton is gone.

 

* * *

 

Herc corners him after his stammered apology to the technicians. They sneer and say nothing, but they don’t punch him either, so Newt guesses things are back to no worse than they were before. Which isn’t hard.

“Doctor Geiszler.” Herc is frowning. Newt closes his eyes and tries not to groan; he doesn’t need this shit from _Herc_ on top of everything.

Not from the man who tried to kill Hermann in front of him.

His mouth trembles, his hands shake. He tries to smile.

Herc nods stiffly, “Anything to report?"

Newt frowns, “What?”

He frowns, “I gave you instructions. I said, have you got anything to report?”

Newt's mouth goes dry and he feels absurdly like some schoolkid who forget to do his homework- it's so insane it's almost funny. "Just- give me some time, okay?"

Herc frowns, “Have you even started?”

It’s not the first time he’s lied, but it just seems _harder_ now, everything seems harder, and he can't quite muster the energy. “Not really.” Never. Nevernevernevernever.

“So you got in a fight with the technicians instead.” Herc sighs and all the anger seems to just- go, his shoulders fall and he seems to get smaller somehow. Newt wonders if he’s the only one who is finding things so much harder. “If you cannot do your goddamn job with them, can I at _least_ trust you to do it with these?”

He nods to one of the mechanics, who brings forwards a clear sealed bag of- _oh, hello there_.

Newt smiles, for what feels like the first time in way too long. He feels a bit of the old excitement, the same as he used to get when samples came in. The eagerness of discovery and wonder and the pressing of new boundaries. He holds out his hands eagerly.

The sack is carefully placed in them, Newt is about to go when- oh.

“Doctor Li?”

The woman looks up from where she’s interrogating the Hussains. She smiles at him and Newt manages a smile back; she’s one of the good ones. “Can I take over your spare lab?”

She waves him away with a nod.

Doctor Li is their resident expert on Breach biotech; she's more in Hermann's team than Newt's, but her lab's good. He drops his prize off in Li's spare parts tank, sets the moisture to high and turns on the lamps, dashing out to grab a voice recorder from his and Hermann's rooms. He erases it, and goes back to the lab.

“Testing," Newt speaks into it as he closes Li's lab door behind him, and then plays it back- good, it's clear.

"Okay," he tucks the recorder into his breast pocket and sits down, pulling the tank over and taking out the first of his prizes; "Specimens were found stuck between Scimitar Grey's foot joints after a trek through the Anteverse; seem to have suffered some damage from exposure to sea water and high pressure at the bottom of the sea, but I think they're recovering with 200ml per square meter of atmospheric vapor and exposure to a sunlamp- specimens currently don't have a species name, but Hermann called them puffballs, so we'll go with that."

He puts on his gloves, and a face mask and protective glasses in case they- explode or something. The puffball continues lying innocuously on the table; "Okay, the first one- specimen 1a is on the table, it's about the size of two tennis balls- ten inches or so in diameter. Colour's a sort of milk chocolate with some gold highlights, particularly in the hairs."

It's quite soft and prickly when Newt carefully touches it. The filaments bend easily, a light coat of fur around a solid centre. He picks it up and moves it to the scales. "Weight is just over a pound- about 500 grams to you, Hermann- pretty heavy for its size." He picks up a pair of tweezers and a scalpel, "Beginning incision, starting at the approximate middle of the specimen."

The scalpel bites in a little way, then grinds against something tough- Newt presses harder and the blade slowly cuts through it; Newt squints and takes a few deep breaths, bracing himself to close his eyes, hold his breath and run if the thing ejects spores or spits acid.

It doesn't. Instead the scalpel gets through the hard layer, then sweeps easily through the middle. "Specimen has an internal cavity," Newt mumbles, reaching down to pull the puffball open.

"Okay, revising opinion, this is more like a mollusk." Newt tentatively probes the bluish thing inside; it still twitches, but the scalpel definitely killed it. "The external part is more of a shell, the hairs probably used to trap nourishment- going to start a RNA analysis on a few smears-" he wipes the scalpel on a slide, "Otherwise, going to go in for dissection."

 

* * *

 

"Hope you're hungry!" Hermann starts, the laptop almost falling from his lap; Newt grins, carrying a box under his arm, and closing the door behind him.

He sets the laptop to one side, stretches. Newt clambers up and slides an arm around him, "Where have you been?" He can't get anger or even irritation in his voice, Newt presses a kiss to his cheek, "I had to deal with the pilots myself." The memory sends cold sinking into his stomach, "They all wanted to talk about it."

He had promised. He wouldn't hide, would do everything to help- _Pentecost_ had told him-

"Shit," Newt’s hands are firm on his shoulders and Hermann gasps in relief as his fingers dig out the tensions and aches from so long holding himself up, all four joints stiff. “Screw those guys,” he murmurs, pressing a light kiss on Hermann’s upper right shoulder.

“No,” he shakes his head, “They wanted to understand- maybe they do now- it might be easier when they do.”

“No reason for putting you through hell.” Newt eases him down on the bed, face down, and gets to works on his back.

“ _Gott_ , that’s good,” Hermann sighs and closes his eyes, Newt’s fingers digging out all the sore little places, where endlessly compensating for a ruined hip and weak leg had put strain on unwilling muscles. “All that time dissecting Kaiju has paid off, hmmm?”

Newt’s fingers hesitate, and he laughs, a bit roughly. Hermann sighs and closes his eyes; Newt is trying to hide it, but that hurt him. “I’m sorry, you’ll have work to do again soon, I’m sure- what did Herc want you for anyway?”

“Oh yeah,” Newt picks up the box and sets it down next to them, “Look what I’ve been doing.”

Hermann sits up quickly, “Not on the bed!” But Newt has already opened the box.

The smell isn’t the hot, sharp chemical smell of Newt’s mock-flesh, but soft and fresh, almost sweet. He looks in, “Oh.”

Newt grins, “I’ve got a few more in Li’s specimen tank, I don’t know how they breed, but they seem to be doing okay.”

The puffball is in several pieces, Hermann picks through them curiously, the coarse outer shell with its little hairs, the coiled creature inside like a snail within its shell.

Newt sets the box aside, "Hermann, say hello to your cousin."

Hermann pulls a face and picks the largest piece up, turning it over and over. "I can hardly see family resemblance."

"Well, no." Newt shrugs, "I mean, there's about the same difference between you and it as with- I don't know- a human and a cabbage maybe? But I did a genetic comparison, and it's about a 34% match so you _do_ have a common ancestor- millions of years ago."

Hermann nods, continues to turn the puffball in his hands. It seems absurd, to find some similarity between this mollusk/fungi mix and- him. But the thought sends something sweet blooming inside him.

Newt understands. "You're real. They based you off something- natural on that world. We wouldn't be seeing matches if you weren't."

It's- a weight off his back he didn't know had been there, washing off his aching spine. The knowledge that he was- not natural. Not born but made, spun of bone and flesh and he can even _remember_ it- the distant, screaming pain of being made, turned out wet and shaking in a pen-

But although he was made and cloned and built up by terrible, nightmare hands- Newt is saying that there was some part of him that lay outside the Master's control. Natural. Home-made.

Hermann smiles, and eats the puffball.

The shell crunches satisfyingly between his teeth; the creature inside is soft and boneless, tender. The taste is salty, bright and sharp as sea-spray, rich and juicy. He licks the box clean and sets it aside, and smiles.

He lies back down and sighs, “Thank you,” Newt hums and kisses the back of his neck, starting to massage him again before Hermann catches his arm and gently pulls him down to join him.

Newt doesn’t fight, and relaxes next to him. Hermann lifts his arms and draws Newt in, closes his eyes.

It has been such a long day. Such a long, strange, bad and good day. Hermann closes his eyes and feels the hope he had never quite dared to feel rise in him. Sunlight on a new day, the birth of new life on a liberated world. Hermann rests his head on Newt’s shoulder and closes his eyes, feels heavy with guilt and light with joy, and slips off to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Newt draws out working on the puffballs for as long as possible, there are plenty available. The Jaegers are sent through again and again, exploring the strange world of the Anteverse. It gets the world’s attention- the first clear films from another world. The landscapes of the Anteverse. The strange flora/fauna and the Kaiju always in the distance, wary of the Jaegers but never attacking. The world wants to know more, and for a while, Newt can deliver,

But there’s only so much he can do with such simple creatures, devoid of environment and context- at least for Herc. They aren’t dangerous, not even all that toxic- although Newt wouldn’t want to eat one. They’ve bought him two weeks, but Herc’s going to start asking about the cold store again.

Hermann gets up and stretches, the light catches on his body and Newt's mouth goes dry. He's _beautiful_ , sometimes it's almost hard to look at him, torn between the desire and _want_ and-

And the cold and senseless guilt, with Hermann trapped in this body. With the human person he'd known for fifteen years _gone_.  Newt forces a smile through the misery- it doesn't get any easier.

Hermann smiles back and lowers his head to nuzzle Newt; "Do you want to join me?" His voice is deep and purringly sleepy. Newt shivers happily at the contact.

"Babe." Newt turns his head up and steals a kiss, "It's like the middle of the day; I got up three hours ago."

"Is it?" Hermann blinks, shakes his head. He's been up since about nine yesterday morning, getting everything running for today's Anteverse dive. "I didn't-"

Newt kisses him again, "Go to bed, dude."

Hermann hums against his mouth; "Wake me up before this evening."

"Sure," Newt lies, because this is first full break Hermann's had for days and he's sleeping for eighteen hours at least. "Sleep well."

Hermann nods vaguely, and hobbles out, stiff from so long sitting. Newt feels a stab of sympathetic pain.

Newt looks after him until the door closes, then sighs, and turns back to his computer, rubbing his eyes. He’d almost welcome a Kaiju attack at this point, just to having something to _do_ \- something that won't get Herc giving ultimatums.

But the Kaiju don’t seem inclined to cooperate.

Newt brings up the camera feed. The Kaiju hasn't moved, curled in a big tangle of limbs and tail with his head half-buried in rubble like cat trying to hide from something scary. The infrared cameras show him up in a halo of colours, red and yellow and bright burning white at his core, a furnace of heat with his great bulk.

It's been six weeks since the last horribly short war- the six hour war, they're calling it - stranded four Kaiju on Earth. Three are in the Pacific somewhere, so deep even sonar isn't finding them. The Three Sisters, Tendo's calling them. Number four through-

The rest of the Hoo Long caves are painted in muted blue and greens, and Newt can make out the ridges and grooves where the Kaiju dug its way in over a month ago. Massive as the caves are, it was a tight squeeze, and the narrow opening is half blocked with rubble.

Newt flicks through the feed. The Jaegers are still standing outside uselessly, the pilots taking it in shifts. The Kaiju- the Dragon in the Cave, as he's coming to be known, hasn't so much as stirred. Why would he? He's in a nice warm cave far from the Masters and the pits; it’s a fucking _paradise_ for the poor creature. Maybe he'll be trouble when he gets hungry but Hermann went for ten years without food and the Cave Dragon's thousands of times bigger.

Newt focuses in closer; he's a bit of a brute, more of a Leatherback or Trespasser than an Otachi or Karloff. Long, solid limbs crouched tight against a heavy, scaly body, a double row of horns running down his back. A citybuster, Newt's sure. All he'd have to do is curl up and roll around and he'd have flattened the place in minutes.

He draws up the footage of the Three Sisters from Lady Danger’s feed and yeah, those are Jaeger hunters. Long, fast bodies, six short, strong limbs with oversized claws, and a whiplike tail with a long, dagger barb on the end. Get one of those wrapped around a Jaeger and it’s game over.

But it's the other things that get Newt's attention, the stuff that doesn't make sense. Like the long, trailing tendrils down their backs- what good does that do?- the phosphorescent streaks down their sides like some deep sea fish. Dragonfish, Newt remembers, from the glow-in-the-dark-poster he'd had as a kid. He used to lie in the dark and stare at the poster and dream he was exploring the depths and making friends with all the strange creatures who lived there.

There's no reason for them to have these traits- they're not offensive or help with swimming or- anything- as far as Newt can see. But he's trying to tally the similarities, because Hermann has similar traits- a lot of Kaiju do- and Newt wonders if he could piece together a common ancestor, some base creature the Masters used to build the Kaiju from.

 _That_ would be wonderful to study. That would be a dream. But it’s not what the PPDC wants to spend their over-stretched funding on.

Something catches his attention in the feed, a start of sudden, rapid movement in the corner of the camera. Newt focuses in and enlarges the image.

Wow, he's stupid- the man is climbing closer to Cave Dragon, as far as Newt can tell, on a dare to see how near he can get before the Kaiju wakes up.

But as idiotic as it is- Newt can’t help but envy him, to be so close to a Kaiju. He’d love to be close enough to study him, to study something _alive_.

Then the guy on screen is joined by about six more, and they all freeze when Cave Dragon opens one huge eye and rolls it towards them. He blinks a few times, slow and lazy, then closes it again.

"Yeah, get out, morons." The people nearly fall over themselves to get away. Then, almost at once, they're back. "What the-"

They've got planks this time, and rope, and nails and hammers and while there's no sound through the feed, they're clearly making a racket. The Kaiju opens both eyes and props his head on his paws, apparently treating this as entertainment. The workers flinch whenever the Kaiju shifts, but don't stop building a- walkway?-

"You're fucking kidding." Newt doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. It's too stupid.

He opens up a new message box, and starts a message to Herc.

_Marshall, the Cave Dragon Kaiju is being used as a tourist attraction-_

Then, the workers must have come too close, because the Kaiju decides he’s had enough; he sits up and _roars_.

The camera vibrates and dirt snakes from the ceiling. The Kaiju struggles to its feet, it’s eyes rolling. The people bolt, rattling back up the half-built walkway. The Cave Dragon’s head crashes into the ceiling, sending down a shower of earth and stone and it roars again, struggling for purchase with its enormous paws.

The fear ripples through the Hive, and Newt is on his feet before he is aware, blood pounding through his head with the echoes of that _terror_ , that emerging, instinctive _rage-_

“Shit.” Newt leans over the desk, fumbles to send a message to the Jaegers stationed outside.

“What the hell-“ Newt brushes damp hair out of his face, the Cave Dragon had been quiet for _months_ ; why had he _-_

He’s got to find Herc. This is something he can give him, something that- and he feels awful to be prioritizing himself, with the Cave Dragon losing it- but just a few more weeks, _please_ -

He stumbles out, and almost runs into Herc. He stops, jerks back, catches his breath.

Herc frowns, “Where have you been?”

“The Kaiju- the Cave Dragon, it’s-“

Herc nods, “I heard, we’ve got people monitoring in case it tries to break out. Where’s Gottlieb?”

Newt frowns, "Uh, _in bed_?” _Herc_ should know; if he's going to ask Newt to get him up after last night- "Like he's going to be able to program anything without-"

Herc cuts him off, “Never mind, he can join you when he wakes up, they’re not going anywhere.”

 _They_?

“Come on,” Herc turns and starts down the corridor.

 

* * *

 

The Jaegers are back; the fourth dive through the eye of the Breach and into the Anteverse. The moment Newt steps into the Shatterdome proper though, he knows something is wrong. People are racing around, trucks and forklifts gathering supplies, and the pilots are sitting with medics, getting- Newt blinks- ready to go back in.

Keter’s arm is a mass of tattered steel.

“What have we got in reserve?” Herc turns and Newt starts at the sight of the technician who almost smashed his face in.

The man gives him a cold look, but answers Herc, “Nothing that matches properly, we’re getting Ronin’s arm out and seeing if we can hook that up, but it’s not going to be quick-“

Herc nods, “Keep it moving.” He raises his voice, “I want _everyone_ in their Jaegers and out in case those things make land.”

Newt catches up with Herc, “What’s going on?”

Herc frowns at him, “One of the Sisters went after Keter when they were coming back out.”

Newt gapes because- _what_? They’ve been sitting quiet at the bottom of the Pacific for nearly two months; the Jaegers have been popping in and out for weeks- why now? And, just, _why_?

“There’s no reason they should-“ He starts, but Herc cuts him off with a cold glare.

“I don’t care what you think they _should_ being doing.” He snaps, “This is what they’re doing. We’re taking care of it. What I want is for you to take a look at this.”

They walk over to the sea entrance to the Shatterdome, where Newt only just notices a large pile, covered with a piece of tarp. “More puffballs?” He tries for a joke, it comes out trembling.

Herc smiles stiffly, “Not quite,” and pulls back the tarp.

For a moment, Newt isn’t sure what he is looking at, the glistening, petrol spill colours of skin, the empty dots of eyes, bodies he had only ever seen as senseless shadows.

Shadows in Hermann's nightmares. In the Drift.

The terrible puppetmasters of the Hive.

The Masters.

 _The Masters_.

Newt jumps back, the _panic_ bursts inside him hot and wild and terrible. His mouth waters and his hands clench clawlessly and the _fear_. The primal terror which he hadn’t even _known_ was sleeping inside him.

It's not his- or not all of it. The Kaiju's minds press close on him, wild and desperate. He feels Hermann stir, disturbed, and Newt tries to calm down, hush him and settle him back to sleep.

Herc is looking at him, confused and annoyed at his reaction. The _sight_ of him is absurd- impossibly _normal_ standing beside those- those-

They’re dead. Their eyes are open and dull, their long, trailing fingers, sticking out every-which-way from the tarp. There’s something like _twenty_ of them and _they’re dead_ and just the sight of them makes Newt want to be sick.

He swallows, tries to pull himself together, and looks over his glasses so the pile of bodies blur into a featureless oil spill of awful. “How- how did-“

“They found an outpost. A long way from the Boneyard. The Kaiju buried them and they must have suffocated. Keter dug them out.”

Newt registers the words, but they barely make sense. They _suffocated_? The living nightmares, the dark gods of that other world _suffocated_? “Right.” He says unsteadily.

Holy fucking god thank you for Hermann being asleep. Hopefully by the time he realises this- this- ridiculous horror, it’ll be over. Newt takes a step closer uncertainly, looking down at those, strange, translucent faces.

He’d never been able to really _see_ the Masters. The footage from the two expeditions through the Breach were pretty bad, and in Hermann’s memories they were just a- a confusion of black void, individuals blurring into each other into a singular mass.

And they’re here; these impossible, distantly awful creatures. Dead.

“I want you to take a look at them.” Herc’s voice breaks into his reverie; Newt stares at him. Herc glares. “Can you at least do that? Or is that also too much for your _delicate sensibilities_?”

There’s a note in his voice, a taut rage that Newt hasn’t heard since- since that awful day in the lab. “No! I mean- sure. I can have a look at them. Can- can you send them to Li’s spare lab? I haven’t used mine since-“ he stops.

He’s said too much, Herc sneers, “I noticed. Use her lab if you have to.”

He waves a forklift driver to move the bodies to the lab. Newt barely sees where they’re going, it doesn’t seem _real_.

Okay. Okay.

He can do this. It’s exploratory dissection, and he’s got loads of resources to practice on. And if it’s a choice between this and the cold store, he can do this. The bodies have been laid out in Li’s lab. Still and so quiet it takes an effort of deliberate will to walk inside.

He switches on a recorder, if only to have something to _talk_ to. “Okay, take one of- cutting up psycho bastards, I guess.” He manages a smile. It’s an easier way to think about it, as some kind of revenge, for two worlds and countless species.

He takes a deep breath, “We’ve got two obvious different kinds which- wasn’t obvious from Hermann’s memories. We’ve got type A,” Newt picks at the creature’s skin, turning it over. It feels oily and stiff, cold. “Large head, only three limbs; two of the legs fork at the end-“ Newt moves it carefully, sees the tendons move under the mucous skin. “And number three splits into four hands.”

The hands are impossibly long, three fingers on each, their touch is light and sickening, Newt snatches his hand away and fights the urge to wipe it on something.

“And type B,” he continues. “Same two forked legs, but- four arms, webbed I think-“ He pulls the arm out, feels the heavy membrane. “Yeah, not sure if they could fly in the Anteverse. Wow, that’s a horrible thought. Head is taller, less broad than type A, four fingers-“ The hands are heavy, clawed at the fingertips. “Body configuration- sorry Hermann, but it’s like you. Four arms, two legs. Even a short tail-” A horrible thought strikes him and Newt pauses.

“Starting a genetic match-“ he switches on the machine, the data from Hermann and the puffballs is still uploaded, so he could run a comparison in a few minutes. “Okay, Herc? This is kinda really important. If we get a match, that means they're Anteverse natives- sorry again Hermann, I wouldn’t want to be related to these things either- and the Kaiju have stomped them so we’re safe. If they’re not-“

Newt makes an incision deep into the creature’s arm. It’s wearing some kind of- flexible suit; he has to go in deep to get a tissue sample. The flesh gives under the blade as though it had been rotting underwater for weeks. The liquid inside is black and it _stinks_. It’s like a mixture of the stench of an oil spill and burning plastic. Newt swallows hard and fumbles in his emergency bag for some Vaseline to rub under his nose. The smell cuts out the hideous reek and he can breathe again. “Okay, _that_ was awful- next time, wear a breath mask.”

He sets the foul mix of flesh and gore on the slide, and feeds it into the machine. “Setting for just a basic match and- it doesn’t look much like anything we’ve seen before. If they’re from somewhere else _again_ \- then the Anteverse is just an Earth that didn’t have Jaegers, and these fuckers are still out there somewhere.”

The figures spit up and- yeah.

Newt sighs, “Yeah. Hermann? Good news, you aren’t related. Herc? Bad news, this lot might have friends somewhere else.”

He tucks the recorder into his pocket and picks up his scalpel again, turning back to Type B. “Okay, calling this one specimen B1; attempting an incision along the face to remove the skin-suit.”

It’s hard not to cut too deep; the flesh just falls apart at a touch; Newt grits his teeth and all but holds his breath to keep focus, slicing up through the pale, nacreous false-flesh. He uses tweezers to peel the suit away.

The creature’s eyes are endless black holes, dull and dead as the eyes of a shark- and frankly that’s insulting to sharks. Newt shudders, the deep Kaiju-born fear trembles inside him. He can believe these things caused so much horror, can believe they thought omnicide and slavery and torturing creatures to madness was a bit of fun.

For a moment, he cannot continue; scalpel hovering over the creature’s face. All he wants is to _go_ , leave this place and run back home and curl up next to Hermann and try and pretend these things aren’t here.

There are nearly twenty of them.

Newt’s breath catches; he shakes his head to force back the tears. It just feels- these things. The cold store. This is what he has to do here. Cut up these monsters or Herc will make him-

Fuck, he still can’t even _think_ it.

Suddenly, and more powerfully than he’s ever felt it before, he wants to leave. He wants to give up this job he hates, that disgusts him, this cold, damp, sunless place where everyone hates him.

There has to be somewhere beyond this. His mother’s dazzling home in Switzerland- all sun on snow and green grass and trees and the warm smell of woodfires- he wants to be there so badly it _hurts_. Or MIT, bright and brilliant-

Or the strange, golden light of that other world. Maybe far enough away from these things that they won’t haunt his dreams.

Newt steels himself, the scalpel heavy in his hands, “Going for exploratory dissection;” He leans over the thing’s head, “Attempting the first incision, cutting between primary eyes, about one inch between the secondary eyes; going to see what these bastards look like inside.”

He tries to be angry, tries for some kind of revenge or satisfaction; but everything inside him just feels dull and empty. Heavy. Hollow as though a hole had been carved in his chest.

The black fluid wells up from the cut; Newt swallows, and works his gloved fingers into the gap, peeling the skin back from-

A face.

A face unlike the first, dozens of tiny eyes studding a slightly thinner face; gill-like frills replaced by mandible-like-jaws, like those on an ant.

“Okay-“ Newt can’t help the tremble in his voice. “Completed- second incision. There’s another face under it. Going to- try another.”

His hand shakes a little as he makes the next cut, cutting a wavering ‘z’ into the rotting, foul flesh. Newt has to stop for a moment and flex his hands before he can get that open too.

There’s another face under there.

Those _eyes_ , three huge ones now, as empty and dull as the others- and all of them _looking at Newt_.

Newt stumbles back into the wall and a fire extinguisher, his stomach rebels and for a moment he grabs at the bin, trying to swallow down the sick that’s fighting its way up. He’s not going to throw up in a lab. He’s not.

He spent years doing this. He drove Hermann up the wall with his bits and his work- he used to feel fascination and excitement and now- _what happened_?

He goes back to the Master; his next cut is rough and ragged, and the face below is gouged as he opens it to the air.

It’s like dolls. Like Russian dolls, one inside the other. Rotting rag-dolls stacked endlessly and thousands of eyes looking at Newt-

“Shit.” He starts at his own voice, shockingly loud in the lab, among the still, endlessly faceless bodies. “This is- I don’t wanna be here.” Here, or the cold store; Newt feels tears bite at the back of his eyes because- what the fuck other choice does he have?

How can he ask Hermann to leave? Where can _he_ go now? Newt, even traitorous, _Kaiju-fucking_ _Newt_ has a chance to find work outside the Shatterdome. Hermann might not even have his PHD any more, what can he hope for?

The eyes stare up at him, endless and mindless and dead.

“This is- like some kind of fucking horror story.” His voice shakes. “Like- like that bit in Independence Day, when the scientist is in with the aliens and they wake up and kill him and- wow, yeah, I just made it fucking worse-“

He chokes, pushes his glasses up to scrub furiously at the tears.

“Fuck these guys.” He quavers.

Then.

It’s not a sound. Nothing Newt can see. Nothing but the knowledge- clear and certain as the awareness of gravity- that one of the creatures behind him has just sat up.

Newt turns, his body numb. His mind blank.

The Master looks at him. It’s so tall it cannot fully stand, head inclined so its crest doesn’t knock against the ceiling. Its eyes are no more alive than those of its sibling whose head Newt has cut to pieces.

Newt opens his mouth- although whether to scream for help or swear or- he doesn’t know.

The creature doesn’t move, and the world ends.

It’s as though a black hole opens up in front of him, and Newt has barely enough time to know- _this is_ _it_ , _this is the end_ \- Just enough time to realise what is about to happen.

The Masters engulf the world, swallow everything in void. His eyes still see the creature, standing motionless in the lab, the others slowly rising from the tables- but his eyes are no longer connecting to his mind.

Newt stares into the darkness that devours the world, and the Masters strike.

His brain explodes with pain. It’s like the Drift- but a thousand times worse. Images flash through his mind- _endless worlds torn apart_ , _deaths beyond counting, seas of black blood and floating citadels of war rising from them, the gaping jaws of Breach after Breach_ -

Newt screams as the claws sink into his mind- the _pain_ \- they scrape and skid uncertainly over his thoughts, struggling for purchase in a new mind, new structures they do not know-

Then one claw catches. The Hive. The ghost Drift. His link with Hermann a wide open door for them.

They close, sink in to the membrane and nerves and brain tissue. It feels like a white-hot brand pressed inside his head. Newt screams- or maybe he’d never _stopped_ screaming; his thoughts _burn_. The Masters sink heavy, endless claws inside him, layer upon layer, deeper and deeper. His body jerks, moves clumsily as they pull on nerves and tendons.

They look at him, this eye, this black hole inside his mind, they look at him and he is nothing before them. This endless collective of millions of beings within one mind that spans universes. He is beneath notice, beneath contempt. He is irrelevant and does not exist.

He is not required.

The claws turn to flames, the Orders to void; the Masters seek him out inside, and begin to burn him out of his own body. Thoughts scorch, self starts to catch- there is not pain but this- nothing to even approach- he screams and screams and screams as his own mouth turns alien to him and he dies inside his own mind.

Then they deepen, drop and grown to the howl of vault-lungs and jaws that can swallow entire buildings. The roars beat inside him, fill him with reverberating rage- and the claws-

The Masters are pushing back, just a little, just enough. Newt huddles behind the wall of rage.

The _rage_.

It is fear and horror and eons of torture welded together in desperate, screaming fury. It’s the knowledge that there is no other option, nowhere to run, nothing to do but strike-

Or curl up on the ground and wait to be annihilated.

Newt _roars_ at the Masters; his throat stripped raw, trying to produce a sound that requires lungs like ballrooms. His hands scramble for something- anything-

His fingers close around the fire extinguisher.

The Master rears; he sees that great, amorphous mass gather itself to strike. Break apart the wall of rage, isolate them and crack them open- burn them out and turn them into-

Dead things. Burnt out hulks. Mindless vessels for their _Orders._

Newt screams again, and swings the extinguisher.

The Master’s head explodes.

Pieces of rotting flesh and black gore and pale, reeking slivers like worms hit the walls and oh holy fuck the _smell_. Newt stops for a moment, stunned- but the great hole in the world doesn’t fade. The others are up now- even the one with the destroyed face, shreds of flesh hanging loose and swaying.

The rage fills him, the Kaijus’ roars. He howls again and closes with the nearest one, uncertain if he had claws or fists or tails or teeth and aware only of the desperate, weeping desperation to kill it _nownownownow_ -

The extinguisher connects, and goes off. Foam sprays in all directions, but Newt barely notices it, the carbon-dioxide smell covering the reek of the dead Master. He shrieks again, drops the ruined extinguisher and jumps at the nearest one- twelve feet tall and he can only reach its chest. He sinks his teeth into its slick, foul flesh.

It’s like biting into an apple and finding a maggot inside it. It’s like biting into an apple and finding half a maggot. It’s like biting into an apple and realizing it’s all maggots, maggots in his mouth and nose and throat and eyes and so hideous and awful he wants to _die_ from the horror of it-

Newt spits. Retches. Punches wildly into the Master’s abdomen.

His hand goes straight through it; there are no bones, no muscles. He pulls his arm out with a thick sucking sound. The Master falls and Newt stamps on its head, which bursts like a rotten watermelon.

He spins around, the world blurring around him to blue on black shadows. He's underwater, fighting his way towards land. He's tearing out of solid stone, straight into the arms of a Jaeger. He’s tangled in sheets, throwing himself against an iron door-

The Masters are backing away, slow, liquid motions from boneless creatures. Newt charges at them as they attack again.

The claws glance off his armor of rage, the wall of blinding emotion not giving them any purchase. They skitter and snag and tear at the connections between minds, the Hivemind and-

The Drift.

Newt's head snaps back, the old link flaring in hypertension agony- but he's moving too fast, his momentum carrying him into the Masters, sending them flying out of the lab in a tangle of arms and legs and reeking, stinking flesh.

 

* * *

 

_The PONS scream all over the Shatterdome as the failsafes break and the systems overload. The claws of the Masters dive in, shredding and grasping crude control of this alien system. The PONS. The pilots. The Jaegers._

 

* * *

 

 

There is no warning. Nothing but a brief pulse of darkness in their vision before the Drift overloads.

The _pain_.

In a moment, Raleigh is back inside Gipsy Danger, feeling her burn and tear and torn to pieces around him- Yancy is screaming- his arm is alive with a thousand crawling worms of pain and no- _he's chasing the RABIT he needs out he needs to stop he needs- Mako Mako Mako where are you-_

The sight of Knifehead overlays with the swollen, mandibled head of Onibaba; her jaws gaping, slathering and eyes empty with madness and he's watching Yancy die and he's seeing Tokyo torn down around him and he's screaming in Gipsy and he's eight on a city street and it _hurts it hurts it hurts_ -

The two interposing heads of the Kaiju blend and roar into a whirlpool of darkness. A black hole opens up before them- behind them- _inside them_ and the _claws_. Wordless Orders scrawled universes high crushing them to the outskirts of their own minds.

Their bodies pull taut like marionettes.

There are no words given, nothing but the raw concept of thought. Giant claws tearing through buildings, teeth crushing metal, the wrack and ruin of San Francisco, Tokyo, Sydney- alien skies smeared with smoke, bodies rotting and burning in endless boneyards- mortuaries spanning entire solar systems-

He screams- tries to scream, the air leaves his lungs but he cannot hear anything over the dull roar of his and Mako’s blurred hearts race and the towering orders scrawling itself into muscles, bones, soul-

_KILL_

Lady Danger straightens, raises her fists, and lurches unsteadily into Hong Kong.

 

* * *

 

 

Newt cannot even see. The world is a senseless blur of darkness- but he can feel them. He can feel their claws, their hands, their sickening, oily skin.

He crushes heads against concrete, bites off hands and punches through throats and abdomens.

They’re running from him- not too far, just enough to stay away from him as they work to break down his mind, break in, burn him to the ground-

_Take the memories, the thoughts the emotions. Every moment of his life- a child running with his mother, a laughing teenager at MIT, meeting Hermann in the Shatterdome- unwanted, without use, they blur and burn sepia as old newspapers as the Masters claw at them._

Newt screams, stumbles, his body alien and lost in a morass of tails and teeth and lashing limbs he doesn’t have-

The Shatterdome is ringing with cries of panic and pain. The _Orders_ lash out and grasp for any contact they can- anyone who has Drifted, who has used the PONS, who has laid themselves open to their claws.

Newt loses his footing and slips, scrabbling on the floor, trying to get back up- _kill them, kill them now and quickly before they come again, they are working us open, they will find us and kill us and nothing will be left no breath or thought or soul of us left-_

He howls again, voice broken and high and little more than breath leaving his torn throat. The Masters pull away further down the corridor, gather themselves- prepare to strike-

A flash of blue-black tears into them, moving so fast it’s little more than a blur, one falls- bleeding black and rotting on the floor, more stumble, try and get distance between them and the spinning blur of claws and teeth-

Back towards Newt.

Newt roars again, voiceless, the fractured Hive whispering _friendhuntermateminemyown_ and closes on the panicking Masters.

 _End this_.

 

* * *

 

The world comes back- not a little at a time- but all at once. The Drift is still active, completely out of balance, but it is still holding and Mako can feel the horror and the burning pain in every nerve magnified over and over between them and Raleigh can taste the blood in her nose and she chokes with him as he throws up into his own helmet again.

Her hands come up to take her own helmet off- his hands smear and struggle with the clips- Lady Danger staggers, tearing at her own head, stumbling back towards the harbor.

Something pops; the visor cracks and splinters under the impact of massive fingers. Every nerve in their bodies is bleeding- Mako cannot _see_ , everything is veiled in red and black- the outside a shattered mirror of confused images- _skydocksea_ \- the shattered buildings they had smashed and burned and crushed-

“No-“ Raleigh chokes, his mask is off, his eyes wild and lost, staring at the huge jaws tearing through the com-pod and his brother- his _brother_ \- her _parents_ and Tokyo drowns in the Alaskan sea and the two Kaiju scream, twisted together in grotesque half-birth-

Lady Danger crashes out of the dock, into the harbor. The water catches at their legs and they stumble. The weight of the Jaeger suddenly feels unbearable- Mako can feel every gram of the thousands ton machine around them. Raleigh shudders next to her, choking and moaning and he cannot catch them- the Drift is breaking down, throwing them further out of balance by the moment. Lady lurches again, starts to topple forwards-

In the mass of pain and confusion and agony- it comes clear as crystal and she can see the Kaidenovskys falling to their deaths in this same harbor, their com-pod cracked open to the seawater and drowning-

The water hits them like a battering ram, bursts and crushes through the visor; they are deep enough for the water to cover them and they roll blindly into the deeper water and there is no light in the disturbed sand and water, no way out, no way to see which way is up. Mako cries out and throws out a hand to try and grab hold of- something- Raleigh’s arm jerking up sluggishly to join hers.

The water chokes them, the wiring sparks and the lights fail- the dull red glow of the emergency lights glancing off the water rapidly filling the com-pod. It’s too late to eject, the systems are burnt out and drowned and _they're next_ and no- _no_ -

Her hand, impossibly, finds something solid. A spar or crane or- something, anything. She throws her weight behind her and feels Raleigh jerkily pull alongside her.

Lady Danger is over two thousand tons, steel and titanium and thousands of miles of wiring and she knows every inch of her- and she has never felt her weight as she does now. Slowly, little by little, pulling them out of a watery grave.

The sunlight blazes through Lady Danger’s shattered helmet. Mako grits her teeth and squints through it- her retinal nerves on fire and every burning inch of her screaming at this treatment. The water drains slowly from the con-pod. Mako dares a glance over and sees Raleigh hanging limp from the harness- he’s still there, just, but in every way that counts she is now piloting alone.

She shakes her head to clear it, feels Lady sluggishly move hers- the water drains a little faster. She gets a leg under herself and tips them forwards, head and upper body above the water. She’s got their balance back, they’re upright.

Mako catches her breath, and glances over to the- whatever it was that had saved them.

The Kaiju leans in and sniffs them.

Its head is larger than theirs. Square and heavy and trailing lank tendrils from its jaws, its teeth jut raggedly. Its long, lean body is tangled in the harbour, Danger's hand still clutching the tail she had used to drag them from the water. The Kaiju's nostrils flare again, leaning in to tap against Lady Danger’s head.

Mako freezes.

She can fight it. It is possible to fight a Kaiju solo. _Sensei_ had done it. Raleigh had finished off Knifehead and gotten Gipsy Danger home. But Mako looks at this great, nightmarish beast- all spines and teeth and endless, crushing coils- and knows she cannot fight it. Her body is drained and empty, the Kaiju is far too close, and Lady Danger too badly damaged.

The Kaiju moves closer, and Mako starts back, legs trembling and buckling under her. The Kaiju pauses, then leans in and starts to lick Lady Danger.

Mako gets a mouthful of hot, foul breath- reeking of rotting silicon and Kaiju Blue- as its bright tongue lashes over the cracked helmet. She tries to move away but the Kaiju plants a paw on Danger’s knee, pulls her back down to a sitting position, and carries on licking her.

Mako hesitates; the plasma cannon hadn’t gone off- the clip is still full, they might be able to-

Which is the moment the Drift dies completely, Raleigh passes out, and Lady Danger goes dead around her.

 

* * *

 

 

Hermann opens his eyes and- _no_.

It was every nightmare he had ever had. Every worst doubt and night terror that had woken him shaking and sick. He cannot look down. His hands are soaked, his claws drenched to the quick, he is bloody to the elbow, stained chest and sides, and he can taste the foulness of blood in his mouth-

He cannot look down.

There had been a nightmare. His mind tries to piece it all together. He had dreamed- he was back in the pits. With the Masters and the battles and the pain and the terror and the claws in his mind and-

And _that creature_ had woken.

He had thrown himself out of bed, torn through the door, and he had- had-

 _How many had he killed_?

Unwillingly, Hermann looks down at his hands- forcing himself to see the scarlet proof-

His hands are black.

Hermann lifts them, blinking. The blood is thick and tar-like. It _stinks_ , utterly foul. Not the hot sick-iron smell of human blood, but something else, something he had only smelt-

Once before, in the pits. When the Masters had drawn him up to examine him before sending him through the Breach.

Dreamlike, Hermann turns around.

The bodies of the Masters are torn to pieces around him. Leaking black blood and still twitching in the final muscular contortions of death. Hermann steps through them. His body feels weightless, the world not quite settled around him. He wonders if he’s still dreaming. Deep inside him, _that creature_ hisses, coils itself away.

He taps his foot against a body tentatively- wondering if it will just melt away at the contact. The flesh gives and bleeds gore over his feet. Hermann grimaces, and tries to shake it off- but he’s _covered_ in the stuff, he can taste it in his mouth, and it clogs his nose. He chokes and scrubs at his face, only managing to smear more of it.

How- why- he had gone to sleep. He’s fairly sure about this. He'd kissed Newt and gone to bed and fallen asleep and-

What had happened between then and now? Had he slept for a hundred years- like in the stories, and the Masters had decided to invade?

He ought to be afraid. The Masters- the _Masters_. The dark counterparts to this world’s kind, loving god. His creators and his would-be murderers and those who had turned him into a machine that had killed a whole species-

They lie dead at his feet. His teeth marks at their throats and his claw marks on their crushed skulls and their bodies torn open from the kicks from his good leg- even his tails are covered in blood.

His mind feels raw and open, tattered by rage and bloodied from the Master’s claws and Orders. He touches his own thoughts carefully, as he might touch his arms and legs after a battle, to make sure they were all still there. In case the Masters had torn some part of him away and destroyed it.

A shudder of pain races through him, sharp and desperate and Hermann starts, but it isn’t his pain, it bleeds vivid and wild through the Hive and-

Newt.

 

* * *

 

 

His body doesn’t work.

He lurches forwards, legs dragging and- how many does he have? He falls forwards, hands scouring bloody on the concrete. He can smell the fresh chillness of the sea- the comfort of the deep depths, curling up with his sisters in the sunless depths, licking and comforting each other against the horrors that had almost claimed them.

His hands grope, he throws himself against the door and the _light_ \- the grey, soft light of the cotton sky…

He can taste the sea, the spray. The pureness of it sinks into his skin, drowns his mouth and oh fuck oh god oh _shit_ he can _taste_ the Masters his mouth is filled with gore and he’s covered in blood reeking foulness and oh fuck please _make it stop_ -

Newt staggers to the fence at the edge of the helipad, and vomits.

It comes up black and nauseating; his thin breakfast is lost among the retching mess of black clots he must have _swallowed_ \- Newt gasps, chokes, wants to cry out and just throws up again, tears searing his eyes and _make it stop make it stop_ -

They nearly died. They nearly… worse than died. The Masters were taking them back, little by little and the edges of his mind are raw and bleeding where the first protective layers of thought had been burnt away and he’s not sure how much he can’t remember is because of terror and how much is because it’s _gone_.

He’d killed them, he remembers that. Their bodies crushed and burst and ruptured like rotting fruit. The Hive is still, spinning silently in his mind and they’re _gone_ and he can breathe again-

Something above him snorts. Deep and rumbling like thunder. Newt looks up.

The Kaiju looks down at him.

A head the size of a ferry. Huge eyes. Tendrils trailing down thick as mooring ropes, so close Newt could reach out and touch them, smooth and blue and glowing. Her great body is coiled in the harbor, claws out and readied. In case the Masters weren’t dead. In case it would take the destruction of the Shatterdome to end this final, nightmarish threat.

She looks at him, and the thought blooms in his mind. It doesn’t sear or hurt or burn. It is just- there, huge and simple as a single character of Kanji painted large as the moon.

The Masters dead. Uncertainty. The Masters rising and lurching, lashing out. Uncertainty.

“They’re dead.” Newt chokes, gripping the rail. The _scale_ of it all unbalances him; the massiveness of the Kaiju, the impossibly huge thought crammed into his mind. He nearly falls over the edge as the ground threatens to tip under him.

_Dead? Gone?_

“Dead.” Newt agrees, “Gone.” He tries to push the thought through the Hive; the image of the Masters dead, the raw physical force of their heads exploding under his hands; bodies falling apart.

The Kaiju listens. At the edge of his vision, Newt can see a Jaeger racing clumsily across the bay. But the Masters had got them too. It staggers and jolts unsteadily with each stride, trying to reach the Kaiju before it can flatten the Shatterdome.

It won’t now. It understands. They’re gone. Newt smiles at her, feels a rush of comfort and affections from her- for him, for this tiny, honorary Kaiju, newest member of their Hive.

Her head lowers, and it should be frightening. For a moment, her head blurs into Otachi’s great, slavering jaws, blue glowing tongue reaching for him-

Then it fades, and Newt is looking back at the Sister’s great head, huge muzzle filling his vision. He reaches up, to touch the tip of that great muzzle, the tendrils falling around him like weeping willow branches.

She would have killed them. Had the Masters won. She would have crushed the Shatterdome and killed them all, crushed the mindless hulk that had been Newt, put his soulless body to rest-

And the _relief_ of it. Staring destruction in the face and feeling nothing but joy. To rest. To close his eyes and never wake up-

“Newt!”

The moment shatters. The Sister jerks, sees the Jaeger racing towards her and dives away. Her great, sleek body slipping eel-smooth through the waters, heading out to the deeper ocean, her tail scythes over the Shatterdome, spraying seawater everywhere.

Newt’s hand is still held up, lost in the open air, his skin streaked with sea water. He blinks up, the shards of blue slipping through the grey sky.

Hands grasp him, and Newt _jumps_. Hermann’s eyes are huge and wild. “Newt.” He whispers, lost.

Hermann is so close, Newt reaches for him and he’s sticky and slick with black gore, his hands featureless claws of pitch; they brush and grasp at Newt, trying to find some way of holding him without straining his already ruined clothes.

He’s so _close_. Newt can feel him. He’s felt him like this before, brief glimpses in sleep, between waking and sleeping, but never like this. He can feel the shimmer of emotions, the shattering flashes of fading horror in Hermann’s mind.

And Hermann can feel him. Can feel every aching weight of the last few weeks. The strain of pretending it was fine. Everything was good. The horror of the cold store, and what was within. The lost sleep and the stress and the senseless horror of losing Hermann every night and slowly forgetting the little details of his human body and the crippling _grief_ of losing him piece by piece even before the Masters turned up to burn him alive- until being crushed by a Kaiju seemed like a blessed relief.

Hermann’s eyes tighten. “ _Newt_.” His voice cracks, breaks; Kaiju weeping deep in his throat. “Oh Newt-“

Newt tries to turn away, but Hermann certified his hold on him, keeping him still. He tries to pull away, hide, but there’s nowhere _to hide_. Hermann can see every part of him. Every broken, bleeding wound from the last war. The night he hadn’t slept and the pills that didn’t work and the crushing waking nightmares and the memories of the Infiltrators waiting to pounce at every turn-

And the older shames. Every secret fantasy he pretended he’d never had- drawing Hermann more bestial in his mind; his gorgeous, savage Kaiju. Every stolen delight he’d taken at watching Kaiju come ashore in the first war- the grace and beauty and _power_ of them - even as they tore cities apart.

And he- he can see Hermann. Can see the deep cracks of old wounds, the scorchmarks where he had once been little more than a whisper in his own mind. The shame of survival. The desperate greedy joys of Earth and the lengths he had been willing to go to hang on to them. The weary broken remnants of his child-self he pushed away and called _that creature_. The frozen, hysterical terror at the Masters.

He sobs, and Hermann pulls him in. He’s wet and sticky and stinks, but he’s solid and real and _there_ and he cannot hide any more. Everything he is is raw and bare and he cannot hide. He doesn’t have to pretend to be strong any more. He can let go.

His hands fumble for Hermann, slipping uselessly against his body, losing themselves in the tangle of limbs even as his mind buries itself within Hermann’s. Their minds like exploded diagrams of thought and motion. Hermann engulfs him, draws him to his heart; cradles him close and safe.

His legs buckle, and Hermann eases him to the solid comfort of the ground. All four arms come around him, pulling him tight against him. Newt screws his face up to try and hold back the well of endless tears fighting their way out- and stops. There’s no point.

Hermann cards his fingers through his hair, “Let it go.” He whispers against Newt’s cheek, “I have you, I won’t leave you. Let go.”

Newt chokes, and does just that.

The great pit of tears inside him ruptures and he _cries_. He clutches at Hermann’s lean, warm body. Alive and _here_ and safe and maybe for the first time he _believes_ it and his heart cracks and shatters inside him and the tears never stop, he crushes his face into Hermann’s chest and _howls_.

Hermann rocks him, whispering senseless words in his hair. And Newt can _feel_ him, pressing close against his mind, his mind a vivid, splayed sketch in the Hive. He’s glimpsed him before, but now he can stop and _look_ , look into the strange, exploded diagram of self, bright and vivid against his. Their minds two fast moving blurs among the four great, calm presences of the Kaiju.

Time fades between them, the world blurs to nothing. Newt is vaguely aware of people coming and going around them, but they do not come close. One person dares approach, and Hermann _snarls_. His mind rising into jagged spikes, his spines up and bristling. They leave quickly.

Finally, Newt has no more tears left. It’s a shocking feeling. After the endless misery, he has no more to cry. He feels stunned. Every muscle is wasted and loose. Without Hermann, he would fall to the floor. He blinks salt, tries to breathe through snot. Hermann kisses his hair, his cheek, his wet mouth.

“Would you-“ he pauses, then his face gentles and he strokes Newt’s hair. “We’ll go inside.”

Newt sniffs, dislodges a load of mucus with a snort; nods.

Hermann gathers him up in his arms, rests some of his weight on Newt, but consumes him, wraps him up and blocks the hard misery of the world from him. Newt closes his eyes, opens his mind to the Hive. Lets the world narrow down to the Kaiju and _Hermann_. His arms, his body, his mind wide and all enveloping.

Newt closes his eyes, and lets Hermann carry him home.

They make it home. Hermann wasn’t sure Newt would make it. He is completely exhausted, stumbling in the last few corridors, eyes closed, head resting on Hermann’s shoulder.

He opens the door, leads Newt in and kicks the door closed- almost overbalancing as the old wound screams. He walks Newt back to the bed, eases him down.

Newt groans, blinks up at him through swollen, reddened eyes. “Hermann-“

Hermann smiles and lies down on the bed beside him, trying not to think of the mess they’re making of the sheets- they can get new sheets. Washing can wait. “Sleep, my love.”

Newt chokes, closes his eyes. “Don’t leave.”

And- _Gott_ , he’s been begging this every night, hasn’t he? Every night, watching Hermann die over and over again. “Of course not,” he murmurs. “Sleep, let me take care of you.”

Newt sobs again, but he has no more tears to lose; he closes his eyes.

Hermann waits until he’s fallen asleep, until he can feel the shadows of his subconscious press against him. Until he can be sure of controlling anything that might emerge.

Hermann gets up, sits on the side of the bed, and buries his face in his hands.

But he allows himself only a few heartbeats of self-hatred. Newt needs him, and their minds are so close that any hateful accusations risk bleeding over to him.

He had stood with Pentecost, looking down at Newt. He had seen him crying and falling apart, and Pentecost had _told him_.

_We need you now, Doctor Gottlieb._

And he had thought he’d meant the Jaegers. The Breach. All of them things others could have done. Li and Diane and Tendo and- everyone. And he’d completely forgotten about the one thing- the one _person_ \- no one but he could help.

Newton had given and given and given without thought for himself. Had drawn endlessly from inside himself until there was nothing left because Hermann had needed him. And Hermann… had taken. Taken and taken without thinking that Newt might need something back.

He had failed. Utterly and completely.

He starts with having a shower. Just a quick one, enough to get off the mess of-

The mess of the Masters’ blood.

It doesn’t seem real. Hermann pushes that away, he can deal with it later. Right now, Newt is alive, here, and needs him.

Newt has rolled over, facing him, face crumpled and lost in sleep. Hermann reaches into the Hive and soothes him, watching the wrinkles fade, and Newt slide into deeper sleep.

He has been a wretchedly awful boyfriend. But he has to time to make amends. He can feel Newt’s desperate longing to leave, the revulsion he feels at his work, the endless cold of the corridors and the people. And Herc-

_Watching the battle through Newt’s horrified eyes, seeing himself eaten alive. Newt’s desperate fight to save him. The bodies of the dead Infiltrators in the cold store._

_Gott_ , what was Herc _thinking_?

They need to get out. Now. And Hermann can only think of one place they might be able to go.

He picks up Newt’s phone, and scrolls through the contacts until he finds the right one.

It rings twice, then is snatched up. “Newt! Newt- oh my little doctor- are you alright? I was watching it on the news-“

Hermann draws the phone away from his stinging ear, bewildered by the stream of German, “Ms Schwartz?”

The overflow of words shut off abruptly. Suddenly silence, then, “Who is this?” Wooden, tentative.

“This is- Doctor Gottlieb, Ms Schwartz.” Has Newt told her about Hermann? He’d never said. And _damn him_ , Hermann had never asked.

Another silence. Then, quavering, “Is Newt-“

Hermann suddenly realises what this must sound like, “No! No Ms Schwartz, Newt is fine.” It’s an utter lie, so Hermann amends, “He is unhurt. He is sleeping.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” There’s a soft sound on the other end of the line, as though a human body had fallen, nerveless, into a chair. “You’re Doctor Gottlieb? The Doctor Gottlieb Newt has told me so much about?”

Hermann nods, then, “Yes; I’m sorry, but I… I needed to make this call.”

“No, of course,” the voice on the other line seems lighter, endlessly relieved; “Thank you. I’m sure you understand, a mother worries and after what’s been happening, I do need to know he’s alright-“

Hermann closes his eyes, and forces the words out, “Ms Schwartz- he isn’t alright.”

Silence.

“He is- physically fine. But the last few weeks- the last month- has been very hard on him. I- I do not wish to excuse my actions, but he kept it from me. I assumed he was well.”

“And he wasn’t.” The chill in the voice could cut ice-cubes.

Hermann shakes his head, “I’ve only just found out and I- we need to leave. Newt needs time away from the Shatterdome. I could not possibly intrude, but-“

There’s a deep breath; Hermann does not dare breathe. He should let Newt go, let his mother take care of him- but-

He _can’t_ , he _can’t_ leave him. He can reason that Newt needs him, will want him to be there and it’s true, but-

He _can’t_.

“Did you hurt him?” She asks finally, and Hermann is sure that Kaiju or not, and damn the thousand miles between them, if he says yes, Monica will kill him.

“Not- not willingly.” The words come out haltingly, “It has been- so hard. I was-“ how can he even explain it? -“I was hurt, and isolated, and Newt stood by me. I- I never realised how much it cost him.”

A pause. “He’s always been fond of you.” She says finally, “Newt cares about you, so very much.”

Hermann chokes. “Yes.”

“Come with him then.”

Hermann exhales, relieved. “Thank you. It has been- very difficult for both of us, and-“ he stops, “Has Newt- explained about me?”

There’s a pause. “I haven’t spoken to Newt for the last two months.” She says finally, “And Newt has been rather evasive in regards to you- I’m sure you know how obvious Newt is when he’s trying to be evasive.”

Hermann nods. Dear _Gott_ yes. “Yes.”

“And,” she says steadily, “I have been hearing stories of a- a Kaiju hiding in the Shatterdome.”

Hermann closes his eyes.

“The two might not be related, might they?”

Hermann sighs, “Yes.”

“Of course.” He gets a sigh back. “Newt always complained about the lack of stereotypical things in _the future_ , no jetpacks or flying cars or- how did he say it? _Hot alien boyfriends_. I can hardly be surprised.”

“Ms Schwartz-“

“Hush. Newt loves you. I think I worked that one out in the first week. If he needs to escape- if you both need to go; then you can come here.”

Hermann exhales, feels as though some part of him had punctured, and he was deflating all over the bed. “Thank you.”

“Do you need me to book plane tickets?”

He’s going to have to sort out a passport. “If you can-“

“I know what you’re paid. I’ll have tickets sent to Newt’s email in an hour. When do you need to be here?”

 _Fuck_ the passport.

“As soon as possible.” Hermann admits.

“Two tickets to Geneva coming through in just a moment. Make sure you take care of him, Doctor Gottlieb.” There’s no mistaking the steel in that voice.

Hermann smiles, “Thank you.”

“See you in a few days.”

She hangs up. Hermann looks at the phone for a few moments, then sighs and lies down next to Newt, closing his eyes and trying to ignore the stench of Master gore turning even fouler in the warm air. The weight of responsibility sloughing off them both, the promise of freedom only a few hours away.

 

* * *

 

The first person he meets when he leaves their quarters eight hours later is Tendo, “Mr Choi,” Hermann hesitates; Tendo stood with him and Newt, but he’s barely had to time to speak to the man in the last few weeks.

He doesn’t know how close Tendo wants their relationship to be, now.

Tendo blinks, and his eyes light up when he sees him, “Hermann! My man!”

It is- Hermann had not been expecting this level of welcome. He takes Tendo’s hand uncertainly, taken aback. Tendo’s eyes are too bright. He hasn’t been sleeping. “Is- is Newt ok?”

Hermann nods, then checks himself. “I- no. He is not okay.”

Tendo’s face falls, and his hands shake, just a little. Hermann quickly explains, “He will be fine.” _I will make sure of that_. “It is just- the last few weeks, and the- attack-“

Tendo nods, “Yeah, I guessed. Everyone who’d Drifted-“ he breaks off.

Hermann stops. “What do you mean?”

But he knows. He’d felt it. The Masters sinking into Newt’s mind and unlocking the secrets of the Drift. As they had once done to find the secrets of the Breach. And armed with that knowledge-

Hermann feels nauseous.

“They- shit man, we didn’t know. We thought they were dead-“

 _Oh Gott_.

“The Jaegers.” His mouth is numb. “Was anyone-“

Tendo’s face twists, “We got them all back; most of the PONS wiring’s fried. Danger needs some major Con-pod work and Scimitar broke her own leg-“

Hermann can breathe again.

“But-“ Tendo looks at him desperately, as though begging him not to make him say it. “They took out most of the docks.”

The great hollow feeling is back, sick and cold. Hermann can feel the tracework of the Masters’ attack in the Hive, the faint scars of their control bleeding through from the Drift. “Did anyone-“

“Just about everyone was in shelters by then- the Kaiju went nuts when we brought them back through, we had warning.”

Oh, can Hermann believe it.

He takes a deep breath, keeps his mind on his goal. “I know the Marshall must be busy, but can you tell me where he is?”

“He?“ Tendo frowns for a moment, then his eyes go wide. “Oh shit. You don’t know?”

 

* * *

 

 

Mako Mori is standing in Pentecost’s old quarters when he comes in. She looks at him, and her eyes are dull, flecked with red from the Drift, the attack. She had been in Lady Danger when the Masters attacked. “Doctor Gottlieb.”

She’s expecting more bad news; Hermann looks away, but gives it to her. “Marshall, we wish to retire from the PPDC.”

She doesn’t quite flinch, but Hermann has spent enough of his life reading every twitch of muscle; he knows. “I see, Doctor.” Her voice is heavy, her shoulders low. “You and Doctor Geiszler?”

Hermann nods, “More for Doctor Geiszler than myself,” he looks at her desperately, willing her to understand- he wouldn’t be doing this unless he had to. “He is- he has been very unwell. This last attack, and the one before have been-“ he swallows, “Very hard on him. He needs some time to recover. I need to go with him.” He pauses, and wants to leave it there, but the haunting memories from Newt's mind are too close. "There are- the Infiltrator bodies are being kept in the cold store. You can dock the cost for a decent burial from my wages."

Marshall Mori doesn’t meet his eyes for a moment, then nods. “I understand.” Still in the same, empty voice. So tired.

Hermann hesitates, it’s a dismissal. He should go, but he can’t leave things like this. “And- Marshall Hansen-“

Mori looks up and her face is suddenly full of fire. “He was being controlled, as we all were. He took his own life rather than attack us. It was an act of great bravery.”

And that was that. It was what everyone would hear, what every news station would broadcast. Hermann nods, accepting the lie. An act of mercy, as much as that final bullet had been to the wretched, exhausted Herc Hansen.

Mori’s eyes soften. She looks out over Hong Kong, the sickening pillars of smoke from the ruined buildings on the shore. “Is that what it was like?”

It’s no more than a whisper, but Hermann nods.

She looks back at him. “We were- puppets,” she says finally. “They- it _burned_. We couldn’t-“ she breaks off, glances back at the wreckage of the docks. “Is that what _they_ felt?”

What can Hermann do but nod? _Yes, it was like that. All of them, every one. Each one you killed was trapped in its own head, screaming and burning._

“They want us gone.” Mori says finally. “Hong Kong. They have had enough. The Shatterdome was a magnet for attacks in the last war, and now-“ She closes her eyes, “How can they expect us to protect them?”

There are no answers. Hermann feels sick and hollow. This is the end then. A better end than it could have been, than he had foreseen four years ago, but an end nevertheless. “Then I- I am sorry to have troubled you.” He says finally, “I will source a passport and be gone-“

“No-“ Mori looks at him again, and this time, there’s a faint smile on her face. “I hope that this will simply mean a change. The PPDC is not finished, not yet.”

Hermann nods, uncertain, but-

But she was raised by Stacker Pentecost. If there’s a way, she will find it. “If you need me- I will be bringing my notes and hardware with me- I can do long distance work.”

Mori smiles, “Thank you.”

For a moment, they gaze out together over Hong Kong.

“They are the creatures we’re fighting now.” Mori says finally.

Hermann hesitates, but the voice of pride is stronger now than it ever has been, fed by Newt’s endless support and love, “You were always fighting them,” Hermann says steadily, “The only difference is they are no longer using proxies.”

Mori is quiet for a moment, then nods. “But the war _has_ changed _,_ the battlefield is different and we-“ she sighs, “We will need new weapons.”

“The Jaegers-”

Marshall Mori smiles, “We are _keeping_ the Jaegers.” Her eyes are sharp, and there is a strange joy in there, the challenge of a warrior with a new enemy. “You can be happy, Doctor, this is a _good_ thing. We won the war, finally.”

Hermann smiles, and feels the flame-bright joy of freedom, the closeness of the minds of his free cousins. The empty hunger of the Masters’ Hive being filled by their thoughts and dreams and joys. “If there’s anything we can do-“

She sighs and nods, and looks at him. Looks at him and for the first time in more than a month, someone who isn’t Newt looks past his claws, his dark blue skin, his shifting, alien eyes, and sees him.

“You won this war too, Doctor.” She holds out her hand, “Enjoy the peace, both of you.”

His heart fills his throat. He swallows and takes her small, calloused hands in his, her fingers strong and sure where they grip his. Hermann cups them in all for of his of his and smiles. “Thank you.”

 


	2. Epilogue I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermann finally meets Monica.

The check-in person stares at him, eyes wide and blank.

Hermann fights down the urge to huddle in his coat, and keeps the hood firmly back- let them look. “Our passports,” he hands them over.

The woman takes them from him as though in a dream. Hermann is uncomfortably aware of the security guards sidling closer, hands on their guns but too uncertain to know how to act.

Hermann looks down at his passport, upside down in the woman’s hands. It’s the best the Shatterdome had been able to put together on such short notice. The Shatterdome staff all have passports of their own so at least they didn’t have to appeal to an embassy. Hermann had no idea where he could even start with that.

He’s come out almost green in the photo, eyes blurs of blue. **Name:** _Hermann Gottlieb. **Nationality:** Kaiju. **Date of birth:** Unknown. **Birthplace:** The Anteverse. **Eyes** : Blue. **Hair** : None._

It’s a heavy feeling; he’s still got his old passport in his bag, not quite able to get rid of in. The old, lost face. Born in 1989, in Germany, brown eyes, brown hair.

Hermann Gottlieb.

Newt’s passport is next, old and creased from having been used so often in the war. Hermann pulls Newt a little closer, letting the coat fall over him. Newt’s eyes are closed; he’s not asleep, but just- resting.

Hermann squeezes him gently, reminding him he’s here, he can take care of them for a few weeks.

Their luggage is small, most of what they owned was destroyed in the Infiltrator attack and Hermann’s clothes don’t fit him anymore. Their books and the mementos they've been able to save will be sent after them to- wherever they'll end up. The thought is terrifying and thrilling at once.

The woman hands them their boarding passes, and Hermann nods. “Thank you.”

She gives him a blank look, but when Hermann turns away, the security guards stand down, shuffling awkwardly back to their posts.

They're flying first class, Monica spared no expense and Hermann is grateful. It means a degree of privacy even at the airport, the exclusive lounge is bare and cold with disuse- people still aren't travelling much these days, and the city is still in shock after-

There's a television screen showing the news, reruns of shaky camera footage showing the same thing.

Lady Danger, crashing through the docks, plasma cannon blazing blue and fists crushing cranes and warehouses and buildings.

The Masters were dead before she could reach the city proper, and the shelters. Hermann watches, Newt warm and still against him, as the Jaeger staggered, falling to her knees, then stumbling away in great, reeling strides.

A neat woman in a business suit comes in and freezes in the doorway. Hermann tries not to meet her stare, puts an arm around Newt and pulls him close. The last thing they need is more trouble.

Thankfully, the woman doesn't say anything; eventually wavering inside and taking a seat as close to the door as possible; staring at him in a mixture of terror and amazement. At a world where Jaegers destroyed cities and Kaiju sat in departure lounges.

* * *

 

They board early; there are few enough other people who can afford the exorbitant first class fares that they are more or less alone in their little corner of the plane. Hermann takes the aisle seat without complaint, which gets him a fragile smile from Newt.

"No arguments?" It's a shadow of his usual taunting voice, the swagger that had sparked a thousand arguments than no it was _his_ turn to sit by the window. Fifteen years of dancing from one Shatterdome to the other- Hermann smiles and shakes his head, extending two arms to let Newt tuck himself in.

Besides, with Newt this close, and Hermann's head resting on his, he has a fairly unimpeded view out of the window.

Hermann rubs his back, feels the worn fabric of the old t-shirt against the pads of his fingers, catch warningly on his claws. It's a conscious effort to retract them, push back the smouldering presence of _that creature_ , awake and nervous since the Masters, and determined to stand guard over Newt.

It must be a mark of how _exhausted_ Newt is that he doesn't even argue when Hermann nudges him to do up his seatbelt, and doesn't try and turn his seat into a bed until they're safely airborn.

Hermann sets his own back, tucks blankets and pillows around them, and helps Newt to put his flight socks on.

Soon they're tucked together, a little uncomfortable on the seats, but Hermann doesn't care. Newt sighs in his arms, pressing close.

Hermann kisses the back of his head. "How are you?"

"Kinda tired." Newt yawns. "Just- glad to be out of there, you know?"

Hermann cannot say he entirely agrees. The Shatterdome _had_ been starting to get used to him, this parade of stunned horror is going to get old very soon. "Better?" He asks instead.

"Hell yeah." Newt closes his eyes and is asleep almost at once.

Hermann stays awake a little longer; the plane is dark for the night flight, the darkness offering a kind of privacy. A flight assistant walks past and tries not to stare at him too obviously.

Finally, Hermann sighs and pulls a laptop from his bag. He might as well check how the PPDC is getting on now they've been thrown out of the last place on earth that would take them.

There's a beep, and Hermann hurriedly puts it on silent, turning the brightness down to dull greys. Newt sighs and rolls over.

A long steam of calculations spill across the screen. Hermann frowns, and cycles through it to find who sent it to him. These look like _Breach_ calculations, Diane and Li's work; it looks as though they're trying to move this end of the Breach-

He finds the message, from Mako's email, and stares, mouth dropping open.

The last place _on Earth._

 

* * *

 

Newt sleeps through most of the flight, wakes only for a quick meal- Hermann waves a polite _no thank you_ , Newt has brought enough food for months in cold store, and the tools to make more wherever they go- and curls up with Hermann to watch a few old films on the television screens before falling asleep again on Hermann's shoulder.

Hermann eases him down gently, folds the blankets close around him. In the Hive, Newt's mind is lax and soft, Hermann bares his teeth and no nightmares dare come near.

The ache of healing pain suffuses the Hive, the licking of wounds and the slow easing of fear from the Master's attack. Hermann hesitates then, for the first time in decades, opens himself fully to it.

He flinches, if only out of instinct, but there are no claws there any more; the space between minds calm and unstirred.

It's like opening wings he had forgotten he ever had, arching out over measureless space at once close enough to touch and infinitely far. Newt is a tight, close ball of active thought and presence beside him, but beyond that he can see- bright as ships in the night, the vivid minds of his cousins.

They soar like lightning reaching back to the sky, pure and great and simple. He feels them turn to him, welcoming this lost one of their family, curious and amused as to the countless complicated thoughts of him; busy and hurried as an ant among elephants.

Hermann closes his eyes and pulls Newt closer, losing himself in the space and scale of the Hive, the darkness of deep space, and beyond that, far beyond the Breach, the constellations of living minds in the Anteverse.

 

* * *

 

 

He can _sleep_.

Newt can only remember bits of the last few days, every time he opens his eyes they drag to close again. And when he sleeps-

Hermann is there, warm and close in the endless, soft darkness of the inside of their minds; standing guard and keeping the memories away. He can feel the vibrations of the plane around them, the deep and wrenching _relief_ of knowing they are going away to a safe place.

He hasn’t seen Monica for years- Skype doesn’t count. The last time was- _fuck_ , nearly seven years ago. After that everything started to go- a bit mad as the Jaegers died one after the other and Hermann’s calculations took shape and it really _sank in_ that unless they did something they were going to go extinct in a decade max.

Then after the Breach closed there’d been the scramble to hang onto the Shatterdome, and preparing for the next war and- okay, Newt had been _kinda_ distracted with Hermann. And after the last war-

Well, they’re here, aren’t they?

He’s woken from his half-dream, half-thought by Hermann gently shaking his shoulder; “We’re here, pet.”

Newt peels an eye open and fumbles for his glasses, “What’d you call me?”

Hermann frowns for a moment, then seems to realise what he’s said, he goes this weird grey which exactly matches the interior of the plane, “I- I’m sorry, I won’t-“ he turns away, and starts stuffing their things into the travel bags.

Newt can feel the faint jolts as the plane loses height, the seatbelt lights flashing. He pulls his seat up, and buckles himself in. Hermann still won’t look at him.

“I don’t mind,” Newt reaches over, and traces the gorgeous curve of a shoulder blade, feels the muscles flex as Hermann tenses, “You can give me pet names, _babe_.”

Hermann frowns and sighs, settling next to Newt. “I blame the Hive, you are influencing me.”

Newt turns and nuzzles Hermann’s shoulder, feels a delicate, deft hand pull him in. “Wanna try some Misfits?”

“I am happier not knowing what that is.” Hermann squeezes his shoulder. There’s an odd tension in- not his body, not his voice but-

Oh, _there_ , of course.

Newt can feel the nervousness lurking just below the surface of his thoughts, “Hey;” Newt looks up, “Don’t worry about Mom, she’ll love you, dude.”

Hermann sighs, “She has several reasons not to.”

It’s- _weird_ to be so close, to feel the flicker of thoughts and emotions pressing against his. The Drift had been there before, of course, but in fits and starts; only half-there. _This_ though, this is like- a whole new sense for him to see the world by and his brain is still reeling from the new input it isn’t too sure how to cope with.

“Nah,” Newt strokes a long, sleek arm, feels the single bone of his forearm. “She knows I’ve got, like, no sense at all. She’s used to it. She won’t blame you because I’m an idiot.”

Hermann nuzzles him, pulls him close and in the Hive his mind spikes to a summit of grief. “I should have seen it,” his whispers into his hair, under the roar of the engines, behind him, Newt sees the last strands of cloud flick by. “I am your-“ he hesitates.

“Boyfriend,” Newt prompts.

“Your _hot alien_ _boyfriend_ , if you insist;” and holy fuck just hearingHermann _growl_ that out sends a hot flare up Newt’s back; “Which is hardly any excuse.”

Newt shrugs, the pain of the last few months feels a long way off, cut off by residual exhaustion and decent sleep and thousands of miles. “She’s not an asshole mother-in-law dude, stop worrying.”

He closes his eyes again as the plane swoops in to land, and misses the deep flare of pleasure when Newt says these words.

 

* * *

 

 

Seven years. It felt so _fast_ , but then there was never enough time in those days. Between the attacks, between the wars. Newt steps off the plane and it’s still sinking in that he’s a civilian now. Of course, he was never actually _military_ , but the PPDC was in a league of its own and it’s taking some time to register that he- isn’t, any more.

Hermann isn’t wearing his coat, carrying it tucked under one arm, head up and pointedly not looking at the people gaping at them.

They know about him, of course. There was _nothing_ but him in the world’s papers for weeks. Kaiju working for the PPDC, it could have gone really ugly if Tendo and the science division hadn’t given a few interviews on their side. And even Herc-

Newt hesitates, Hermann pauses, and gently draws him up to go again.

Herc is _gone_. Had blown his own brains out when the Masters got him and yeah, they’re saying it was to stop himself hurting people but- Newt knows the truth. They all do. It was too much, had gone on for too long. There’s only so much anyone can take.

For a moment, Newt is standing on concrete again, choking on sea-spray and Master gore, staring up into the face of a Kaiju and all he can think is _at last_.

Hermann catches the last part, and stops dead. His face crumples and Newt wants to yank the thoughts back, doesn’t want to add to-

“No;” Hermann says hoarsely, “No, don’t hide it. I can see it. Let me help you.”

Newt nods, and they walk again towards Arrivals.

 

* * *

 

 

For a moment, when they come out, he is terrified he won’t _know_ her any more. It’s been so long-

Then they have an entirely _new_ concern as the place explodes with light.

_Oh fuck_.

There are about a _hundred_ reporters swarming the Arrivals lounge. Hermann starts and stares at Newt and- fuck, they’ve been idiots. No one ever really bothered with them before, saving the attention for the Jaeger pilots, but- _of course_ they’re here; someone must have alerted the whole world media that the PPDC Kaiju was going to Geneva.

They rush in on them so fast Hermann starts back and actually unsheathes his claws. The first reporters see them and freeze, but are immediately shoved forwards anyway from the sheer pressure at the back.

_“How long have you been hiding the truth?”_

_“Doctor Geiszler! Is it true you’re together?”_

_“What did you do to convince Cambridge to acknowledge your degree?”_

_“Doctor Gottlieb! People claim hiding what you were held the PPDC back years, what do you say to that?”_

_“Did you have anything to do with the Jaeger attack on Hong Kong_?”

Newt grabs Hermann’s hand to steady him, he seems to shrink beside him, huddling in and Newt doesn’t need the Hive to feel how deep the shouts are cutting. He tightens his grip and tries to shoulder their way through-

And suddenly, someone is at his elbow. Not a reporter. A small, slight, squat woman dressed in a frazzled fur coat and long dark dress, a tiny hat pinned to her black hair. The umbrella held at the ready, like a general’s swagger-stick. The pearls clasped close around her neck, the glittering rim of the glasses.

When had she become so _small_?

But her hand is still strong, tight as a trap as he grabs his arm and hauls him through the throng. Newt drags Hermann in, keeping him close as they try and make a run for it.

Then Hermann stops, so suddenly that Newt’s hand slips out of his. “Come on-“

Hermann takes a deep breath, and shakes his head, he adjusts the coat under his arm, tucks his carry-on bag onto a lower arm, and straightens himself in a way that’s _so familiar_ Newt almost laughs. It’s Hermann-Gottlieb-about-to-file-a-complaint. It’s the first time Newt has seen him like this since they closed the Breach.

Hermann tries to turn to the reporters, but they’re everywhere, so in the end his just takes a deep breath- “ _Get back!”_

His voice catches, roars. His free upper arms draw up and Newt sees the slight flash of claws- not unsheathed, but very much visible.

The crowd- doesn’t so must disperse as _disappear_. One moment, they were all around, the next Hermann is standing in a circle all to himself ten feet across. Two cameras are on the floor marking where two assistants couldn’t move fast enough.

Hermann takes a deep breath, glancing around at the frightened faces. Newt sees his spines droop in dismay. “I am here with my- with my _partner_ to visit family. We are not to be disturbed or else-“ Hermann trails off, he has no idea how to finish that threat.

But the crowd doesn’t seem to need it; they’re already rushing for the doors. It’s just- _weird_. This is _Hermann._ Newt _knows_ him, knows the ineffectual anger and hopeless protests from more than a decade together. The fact that he’s changed bodies is almost irrelevant. But to everyone else-

For a moment, Newt sees him as the crowd sees him, tall and lean and savage, bared teeth and claws, spines raised, tails lashing the carpet, even his cane, in his hand, looks like a weapon.

Newt looks down at Monica, who is staring at Hermann speechlessly. Newt tries to smile. “It’s okay.” She looks at him. “He’s really nice, really.”

Hermann looks at them, helplessly, “I didn’t mean-“

Monica looks at Newt, then at him; “Come on,” she waves Hermann over, “Let’s get to the car before they have time to change their pants.”

 

* * *

 

 

Monica Schwartz is- there is no other word for it- _glamorous_.

Hermann can’t help but shoot some envious looks. He had settled on his human style through practicality; combining something that would let him hide imperfections under layers and render him ordinary enough to be overlooked. But it _had_ been rather drab, and Monica’s perfectly turned-out dress of deep blue-black, the lighter blue of her shoes matching her earrings and tiny hat, speared to her perfectly permed hair.

It’s hard to believe she and Newt are even related.

They duck into the car park and Hermann swallows his pride, hands his bag, cane and coat to Newt and drops onto all sixes to keep out of sight.

Thankfully, they aren’t the only car leaving. A few reporters obviously thought this was not worth commission and are pulling out. Hermann huddles into the footwell to hide, Newt and Monica slumping low in their seats.

“You can come out now,” Monica’s voice is soft, but _rich_ somehow; Newt had mentioned she was an opera singer, “We’re off the main roads.”

Hermann picks himself up gingerly, Newt gives him a hand and he straps himself in. He can’t meet Monica’s eyes through the mirror. First his unforgivable oversight with Newt and now this-

He can feel her eyes on him, and looks down at his hands, trying to keep from fading into the upholstery.

“Oh Newt,” Monica sighs finally, “Why am I not surprised?”

 

* * *

 

 

It takes two hours to reach Monica’s house, the narrow winding roads working their way into the mountains are almost deserted, but Hermann ducks down whenever they do meet a car. The last thing he wants is for news of where they are to reach the newspapers.

He recognises the house from Newt’s dreams. The mountains crowning the horizon, the rolling fields behind the house, the little grove of trees, the still pond reflecting the mountains.

And the house, a modified barn probably, cosy and nestled in the cover of the trees on one, side, open to the field on the other.

Hermann smiles, turning to Newt- only to see Newt and Monica looking at each other. Newt grins, “D’you want to start?”

“I did it last time.” Monica is trying not to smile, but Hermann can see the glimmers of the beginnings of one.

“Together?” Newt is all but hopping, glancing at Hermann and- _Gott_ , this is Newt. This was the sweet, brilliant, impossible man he knew and loved. How could he have lost him and not _seen_ it?

Monica smiles, “All together now, one, two, three-“

They stand together, throw their heads back, fill their chests-

“ _The hiiiiills are alive with the sooound of muuuusic-_ “

Hermann stares, opens mouthed as they belt their way through two stanzas of some song. Monica’s rendition is high and bright and beautiful, Newt trying to make up through sheer ballistics.

They get to the third verse before Newt loses it, doubling over and laughing helplessly. Monica stops and manages to control herself, but her smile is irrepressible and- oh, Hermann can see where Newt got it. It’s the same smile, odd but fitting on her meticulously made-up, aged features.

Newt punches the air, grinning at him and Hermann has the familiar feeling of missing some rather important reference. “That was- nice?” He hazards.

Monica stares at him, “Doctor, why haven’t you educated our poor guest?”

“Sorry,” Newt wipes his eyes, adjusts his glasses, “He’s kinda behind on movies.” He hugs Hermann, “The first time we came here to view the house, we both just starting singing- and it’s a tradition now.”

Hermann shrugs, but he can feel the love and affection in Newt’s smile, his eyes, through the Drift. He holds out his hand, “Come on, I wanna show you around.”

 

* * *

 

 

The house is rustic, but the furnishings are elegant. There isn’t much- an older woman living alone doesn’t need much- but what there is, is luxurious and stylish. Hermann looks around at the posters of countless performances. A picture of what is unmistakably Monica is shot in close-up, mouth open to sing to the title: _Il barbiere di Siviglia_.

“Oh, you were in _Madam Butterfly!_ ” Newt has immediately rushed to investigate the posters, “Did you-“

“Here you go.” Monica hands him a home-burnt CD. “But I hope we could watch it together? Do you-“ She looks at Hermann, and for the first time looks a little uncertain, “Do you enjoy opera.”

Hermann smiles, “Madam, I _love_ opera.”

Newt takes him by the hand, “Come on, I’ll show you round.”

Most of the house is much the same. The simple, rustic house with its elegant furnishings. A kitchen with a bewildering array of tools and appliances. A tidy bathroom with a hugely comfortable looking bath and sizable shower stall. Then they go upstairs.

“There isn’t a spare room, Newt pushes one of the two door opens, “So, you’ll be okay with me?”

Hermann smiles, he’d tease, but things are still a little raw. “Of course.”

The room is completely at odds with the rest of the house. Everything is old and scruffy, an old duvet cover worn almost see-through. There are knick-knacks and bits all over the place. Hermann picks up an ancient plush Godzilla, its fur rubbed bare.

He holds it, and the memory of a dream sweeps back. A tiny Newt-child huddling under a bed, clutching the toy. The tiny plump hand tight around the tail, the other on a rucksack as he and his mother run into the night.

“Careful,” Newt strokes the toy’s head, “I kinda wanted to take him with me, but- he’s so old, I didn’t wanna lose him.”

“A good choice,” Hermann lets it go, and looks around at a dozen twins on the walls. Newt’s room is also covered in posters- all of them from old Kaiju movies. “Good grief.”

“Yeah,” Newt blushes, “I used to think he’d come real, you know,” he squeezes Godzilla, “Like the velveteen rabbit story? But then San Francisco happened.” He looks down at the tiny Kaiju. “It’s weird, isn’t it? It’s- almost unfair. So many people get killed or lose everything and for me it’s been- so amazing.”

Hermann shifts, not entirely comfortable, “You risked more than most.” He puts an arm around him, “It was hardly easy-“

Newt looks at him, “Yeah but- fuck, I got _you_. And I’ve been studying Kaijuand-“ his voice trails off, there’s too much to say.

The whole of their lives together rise around them; the work together, the risks and dangers and the Drifts and Otachi’s jaws and the baby Kaiju lurching towards him and _Hermann_ and the two of them together and close and _amazing_ and the Breach opening and the Infiltrators; Hermann’s blood hot on his hands, never to quite disappear; the ranks of the dead in the cold store and the Masters swallowing the world- blazing out like dying stars under their hands, leaving only the soft darkness of the Hive, the stars of minds; the two of them orbiting each other like a binary system.

Hermann catches Godzilla as it falls from Newt’s hands, drawing his claws back as much as possible to avoid tearing it. Newt’s eyes are closed. Hermann pulls him in.

“It was really great.” Newt mumbles, “Just- why did it stop?”

Hermann eases him over to the bed, they sit down together. He doesn’t have an answer, just holds Newt close. “You will be fine.” He says finally, “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

 

They watch _The Sound of Music_ that evening. Hermann enjoys it very much.

 


	3. Epilogue 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue two of three

Newt glances over at Hermann, quickly, not wanting to take his eyes off the road. Hermann looks asleep, head resting against the car window, but Newt can see his eyes are half open, can feel the stirring wakefulness of him in the Hive.

Newt looks back at the road; it’s empty. Chile didn’t have enough money to build much of the Wall, and the Pacific coast has been deserted for a decade. Newt reaches over and rubs Hermann’s upper shoulder. Hermann starts, and smiles. “Not far now.”

“You recognise this bit?”

Hermann nods, points towards a bare, grubby field, wild and untended. “I spent a night here.” His voice is soft, dreamy.

“And you fell in love with the stars?” Newt smiles.

Hermann huffs, “There was a storm, in fact. I had never seen one either, it was-“ he glances out of the window, at the grey overcast sky, “striking.” He sighs.

Is there a bit of nostalgia there? He’s smiling, small and wistful; he looks so- open, and vulnerable. Newt wants to stop the car and pull him into his arms and just- hold him, forever. Hermann catches that thought, and sits up, leaning over to Newt’s side, stroking a hand over his shoulder.

Newt slides an arm around him, and tugs him in. “Love you.”

Hermann nuzzles his neck. “You’re my world,” he murmurs. “My own world, in my hands.”

Newt glances at him, but his mind is slowly going slack, sleepy, dark eyes slipping closed. Newt shrugs, and checks the map again. About an hour out. The little village has been crossed out- not from a Kaiju attack, just evacuated soon after the war started.

He strokes the back of Hermann’s head. And- he is starting to recognise this place. He’s never been to Chile before, but Hermann’s memories are bright and vivid as he sleeps. It’s the tiny details that stand out, the slip and scrape of sand under his bare feet. The first glorious sight of a bird in flight. The whip of grasses on his legs and the _smells_ ; overwhelming after the monochrome blood and death of the Anteverse.

The memories grow richer the further he goes form the Anteverse, the sheer _space_ inside his mind. The memories of the living village, watching children and adults and creeping to the church door to listen to sermons. The shy, almost incredulous joy of discovery and- oh. Newt squeezes Hermann’s shoulder. The closeness of the Hive is wonderful, but he just wants to hold him and never let go.

The ramshackle buildings of the tiny village slowly come into view. Newt slows the car, but doesn’t wake Hermann. He wants to see this place first, get an idea of the place that had been so important to Hermann.

It’s not much. The roof of the little white pasteboard church has fallen in, the loose shutters of the houses rattle in the endless Pacific wind. There’s a half-collapsed school at the far end of the village, the grass in the fields is thick and dusty, groves overgrown and forgotten.

It’s basically just like thousands of other villages on the Pacific coast. Newt stops the car, opens the door and breathes the fresh salt air, pure and fresh after the mingled smells of gasoline and iron in the Hong Kong Shatterdome.

Hermann stirs, eyes blinking open, first half-lidded, then widening. “Oh.” He breathes.

“Yeah,” Newt gets up, the wind stings of sand from the low dunes. “We’re here.”

Hermann opens the car door, pads out onto the overgrown gravel of the road. He sits back, and looks around, breathless, at the ruins. Newt blinks as the world is subtly overlaid with new- or old- images. A thriving little village, the ghosts of people flitting through the streets, the houses clean and well-maintained. The gardens and fields neat and tended.

Newt walks to stand beside Hermann, checking to see he isn’t too upset by the change in such an important place. But he’s calm, even smiling a little, as he looks around the empty homes. He senses Newt’s concern, and glances up at him, “They could hardly have stayed,” he shrugs.

He looks around again, greedily. “Do you want to come to the beach?”

 

* * *

 

 

There have been other beaches. Hermann has spent the last fifteen years traveling from one side to the Pacific to the other, but this place- logically, there is nothing separating this stretch of sand and tussocky grass from any other for miles up and down the coast- this place is special, all the same. The last twenty years have sculpted the dunes into new shapes, and the sea changes every moment.

But all the same, it- means something to be here again. At the end of the war, safe and alive and true to himself and with Newt. An embarrassment of riches from this new world.

He walks down to the beach, on six legs, as he had come up it. The water is fresh and cool where it laps at his feet, the air rich with salt and sweet. He can close his eyes and step back twenty years.

But why would he want to? He smiles, and looks up at Newt, who smiles back down at him. There’s something off about it, masklike joy when his eyes don’t agree.

He’d overlooked the wrongness of it for months. He will not any more. Hermann leans against his hip. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” The tension in his voice, in the Hive, shows what a lie _that_ is. Hermann narrows his eyes. “Well,” Newt it trying to be cheery, and fails. “You were- kinda born here, weren’t you?”

Technically, of course he wasn’t. But Hermann can feel what Newt means, and doesn’t feel like splitting hairs. “I suppose I was.” He says carefully. “I could- show you, if you’d like.”

This time, Newt’s smile is entirely true. “I’d love that.”

Newt keeps a hand on his shoulder as they walk back, slowly. Hermann placing his feet in long-lost footprints, retracing the steps he’d taken on that unforgettable day in 2008.

He sighs and settles in the grass beside a great boulder, overlooking the little cottage, its walls now overgrown with ivy, the playing field thick and wild. His leg aches from the long car ride, his mind fills his own head, the Hive is soft and welcoming around him. “I was still- obeying.” He explains, resting his head on his upper arms. “I was supposed to observe, so I did.”

Newt sits next to him; Hermann rolls over and rests his head in his lap. “Who were you watching?”

“Some children.” How scared he had been, thinking they would be killed, because _of course_ children died. It’s a strange thought to think it had once been a natural assumption. It no longer is. This welcoming, softer world has rubbed off on him. Hermann is so unspeakably happy about this. “I just watched them, all day. I grew my first skin and learned a little German.”

“Did you look-“ Newt’s breath catches, and Hermann looks up at him, Newt swallows, forces a horribly fake smile, “Did you look like- before, I mean, did you always look like that?”

Hermann nods slowly, looking at him and- are those tears? “It was rougher, I was not very good at the details yet, but- yes, more or less.”

Newt nods quickly, looks away, swallows again. Hermann hesitates, wondering if he should say something, or just let Newt keep his silence on the deep grief welling up inside him. He looks away, and gets up stiffly- that’s another change, he thinks ruefully. His bad leg, the still-healing and probably never-fully-healed damage of the last war. He is rather more battered than the last time he was here.

He would have given up far more for this.

They walk over to the church. Hermann glances at Newt; he doesn’t believe in God. Hermann doesn’t mind- and he doubts God does either. Newt is brilliant and loving and kind, and what is more important than that? But he is also a little opinionated on the subject, and Hermann doesn’t want this moment tarnished by an argument on theology.

And Newt does laugh when he sees where they are going, “Wow, seriously?” Hermann gives him a sharp look, and he waves him off, “Okay, okay- sorry. But man, you could have washed up by a university or something.”

His laughter is real, if shaky, but Hermann still feels his hackles rise, his spines pricking up defensively. “They spoke of love, or peace and kindness and being gentle,” he snaps. “I did not understand it all, but it was the first time anyone had said-“ The words catch in his teeth. Newt’s face falls.

“Shit- sorry.” He sits beside him on the doorstep, the white stone worn hollow from thousands of feet. “I didn’t know-“

“Do you have to?” Hermann rests his head on his shoulder, “Is it not enough that it is important to me?”

“I’m an asshole.” Newt agrees. Hermann snorts, and nods.

Newt puts his arm around him, rubs his shoulder. “I chose my name here,” Hermann sighs, “They left out clothes. I decided to live here forever.”

The hand on his arm stops. “It’s a good name.” Newt agrees, his voice thick, and Hermann feels absurdly pleased. Maybe it was what he had wanted, in the moment he had written names in the earth and chosen one, for someone to say it was a good choice. “You- you became you here.” His voice shakes; Hermann looks up and Newt is staring off into the distance, eyes wet.

“Newton-“ Hermann sits up, puts a hand on his shoulder.

Newt shudders, looks at him as the tears streak down his face. “I miss you.” He manages, and crumples in Hermann’s arms.

Misses him? They haven’t been apart for years. “I- I am sorry-“ Hermann has no idea what to say, reaches into the Drift to find the source of that crushing, crippling _grief_.

And finds, in it, his face.

His human face, the face he had polished and tailored, shed after shed. The proportions slightly wrong, the mouth too broad, his hair still in the same cut he’d copied from the schoolchildren here.

And, perversely, Hermann feels a reciprocal grief well inside him. It’s beyond senseless because he is _him_ , he has always been _him_ \- even in the Anteverse, when all the _him_ there had been was crushed up on the outskirts of his own head under the orders.

But Hermann Gottlieb wasn’t just him, Hermann Gottlieb had been human. Had a childhood in Bavaria and a family and a history and for all it had been made it up, it had been _real_ all the same. It had been Hermann’s life for twenty years. He’d been human, for all the wonders and pains of it. The endless paranoia in hiding and the breathless freedom of being invisible.

Before the war, he had thought he would live as long as he could here, and die quietly when his body finally gave up. During the war, he hadn’t dared imagine a future. Now- he doesn’t know any more. The world is trackless and new, there are no precedents for a Kaiju living their life on Earth.

He feels the loss of it, the loss he had never allowed himself to acknowledge. A life, a history. A work of art. It’s an acceptable sacrifice, it’s less than he deserves to lose, but he grieves for it all the same.

And Newt, curled up and crying on his shoulder, hanging on to him as though the world would fall apart if he let go- he lost more. It wasn’t a story for him, for thirteen years. It was the truth. Thirteen years side by side, acerbic and sniping and brilliant and the friendship rising between them inevitably as the tide. Even when he knew the truth- he saw Hermann the human being every day, Hermann the Kaiju once every few months. He’s lost his best friend and lab partner and left hand for thirteen years and his lover isn’t sure how to replace him.

Newt sniffs, wet and disgusting, and wipes his nose on his sleeve, Hermann pulls a face and Newt chokes a laugh- that must have looked familiar, despite the different face. Hermann smiles, and hands him a handkerchief.

“I just miss you, you know?” Newt takes a ragged breath, “It’s stupid-“

“It’s anything but.” Hermann says firmly.

“It’s just- sometimes I turn around and expect to see you- human you, because you’ve been there for, like, a third of my life or something. And you’re not there, and it hits me all over again and I used to- I used to think I was mad and you really were dead and it was just-“ his voice breaks; Hermann pulls him close and draws his claws slowly over the crown of his head.

“I miss being human.” Hermann admits, into his hair.

Newt looks up, glasses steamed and crooked, “Yeah?”

“Of course,” Hermann smiles, “It would be nice to fly somewhere and not be mobbed by reporters, and I have no idea how either of us will find jobs.”

Newt’s laugh is wet. “Yeah, I thought maybe we could help out with the Dragon in the Cave, you know, the Kaiju? But he’s in the Pacific with the others now, so that’s out.” He wipes his eyes. “I don’t know what we can do- you can work with the PPDC again, they’ll have you, but- we’re not fighting the Kaiju any more, what’s the point of me?”

There are a thousand points of him, each more valuable and vital than the last. In the whole, wide world, he is the only one who loves Hermann’s people, who shares their Hive and is part of them. Hermann adores him beyond reason. “You can come with me,” He says softly. “I have been thinking of going back to the PPDC.”

Newt nods, “Yeah, you’re like the number one expert on Breach tech. We can go, if you want.” And Hermann can feel how much it costs Newt to say that, and his heart tears itself to pieces in his chest. “I mean, I won’t stay in the Shatterdome, but if you want to commute, that’s fine, I like Hong Kong.” He frowns, “Are they in Hong Kong now? I haven’t been reading the news, but I thought they were kicked out-“

Hermann nods, and smiles. “I have been talking to Tendo, and Marshall Mori. They have found a-“ He hesitates, but this is a revelation he wants to savor, “a new site for the Shatterdome. I think you will like it. You can still study the Kaiju, if you want.”

“Kinda hard when they’re at the bottom of the sea.” Newt grumbles. Hermann holds his secret deep against his heart and tries not to let the bubbling joy of it bleed into the Hive.


	4. Epilogue 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last of my Prodigal epilogues, beta read by the ever-wonderful Sherri

The air is cold, and so damp that Newt's breath doesn't steam so much as add to the existing vapour that clings to everything and makes the ground underfoot somehow both grainy and slippery at the same time. He catches himself on the rough ground after the stomach-churning journey of the shuttle.

The ruins gape around them.

It's beyond bizarre, his eyes warring with the memories he doesn't have, that have bled over. He can see the walls that had been, the arching bridge, the loom of flesh endlessly weaving life.

He looks for the walkways, the control stations, the void of the Masters, but there is nothing. Just the broken ends of fossilised flesh where they had grown into the cavern walls.

The walls are waist-high around them, and Newt feels his mind- their minds- start to rebuild them, the walls arching high over them, the shuddering mouth opening and closing- breathing- above them. The cries-

Hermann moans. Newt turns quickly and he's huddled on the floor, against a wall and- the pit. He's back in the pit, the memories are so _real_ they eclipse reality.

"Hey." The air is bitingly cold, so flat and stale his voice makes no impact. Newt kneels next to him and Hermann turns wild, lost eyes at him. He can feel his mind trying to make sense of him.

"Newt."

"Yeah," Newt smiles, strokes his back, "It's okay, look-" he pulls the Hive open, and pours in what _he_ is seeing, without the intrusion of memory. The ruins, the destruction, the open sunlight streaming down.

Hermann stills, calms. He closes his eyes and stands up, resting two hands on the top of the wall. Newt feels the nightmare place around them shrink, crumble, return to reality.

Hermann opens his eyes, staring around with a stunned, wide-open look. Lost, bewildered and uncomprehending. Inside, his mind's slack through the Hive. "I-" He swallows, "I cannot believe it."

That's okay, Newt can't believe it either. He steps over and takes Hermann's hand in his, "You okay?"

Hermann blinks from him to their surroundings, as though trying to equate the two and Newt can see- can feel that... other self of his, wary and close to the surface from the memories. "We should go."

"Come on," he pulls Hermann's hand and they set off gratefully. Lights have been set up here and there in the caverns, dots of bright light made slightly vague from the condensation beading on them. The ruins grow more broken as they go, trampled by countless giant feet as the Kaiju had fled this place.

The Jaegers have cleared a path through the Boneyard. Newt looks up and the _scale_ of it. They've only just started cataloguing the dead, but there are thousands of complete skeletons here, and no one can even try to make sense of the millions of tiny bones covering the ground.

Newt wants to name them all. He wants to grab a rock and start carving their names into the wall so- so _someone_ remembers. The Masters don't, the Masters didn't even notice. Trespasser, Otachi, Slattern- they're remembered, at least. They had names. These poor creatures didn't even have that.

Hermann drops down to all sixes, pants. Newt stops. The ground is clear of bones, already beginning to be colonised by the puffballs. "Hermann?"

Hermann looks around, opens his mouth, then closes it again. It's okay; Newt can feel it between them- too big to be spoken. It's massive in the Hive, a Kaiju-thought eons across. Grief.

It's not just theirs. It's in the bones of every Kaiju, the hundreds of thousands that survived and spread out across the world. The uncounted dead, the misery and horror and nightmare of the pits they carry with them- too big for any of them to give voice to.

Newt sits next to Hermann, puts an arm around him, and tries to think of something- to make this better, to take the hurt away.

"Fuck those guys."

Hermann gives a wet snort.

"Seriously." Newt smiles at him, "It wasn't your fault."

"I know." Hermann says with a sigh. "Can you feel it?"

He can. The Hive is full here. On Earth it had only been them and the four Kaiju, here- the Hive is _alive_ with thought and emotion. The grieving is followed by a sort of quiet acceptance. A species-wide determination to put the past behind. Forgive pit-foes and turn to the suns. It hurts. It hurt then and it hurts now, but it doesn't have to any more.

Newt kisses Hermann's cheek, and he smiles sadly. "It was a good idea to come here." He stands again, hide gleaming black-gold, under the faint glow from the mouth of the cave.

The end is almost a surprise, in the end. The great tunnel twists and turns as they walk, following the tracks of Jaegers and- before- the great exodus of the Kaiju. Newt runs his fingers over the half-overgrown marks of massive claws in the stone, then-

 _Oh_.

The _light_ , it's pure gold,

Newt shields his eyes. The air is sharp and fresh, moisture so thick it's like being in a steam room. The warmth, after the cold of the Boneyard, hits them like a wave. Newt wipes the fog from his glasses.

He's only seen this from Jaeger-view; this far down, the world is dominated by the great, nonsense towers of the puffballs. They tower overhead, twine with each other and join in giant arches, looking like nothing less than a coral reef from the point of view of a mite.

Just beyond, half obscured by the tallest towers, Newt can make out the impassive stretch of ocean. Mirror-smooth and gleaming in the light of the suns.

Hermann looks up from beside him, so close now Newt can almost see through his eyes. The suns he had seen only once before. They had been terrifying, one more incomprehensible feature as he was dragged out of the pits and before the Masters and out through the Breach.

He can feel the memory, feel Hermann hold it up to this new context. There's a faint, long-swallowed spark of fascination- a binary star system- or three? Is the dark orb a planet or a dead sun? Are they really orbiting so close together, or are they further apart and simply so huge they look closer?

"They're gonna need astronomers." Newt grins, "They need- fuck, they need everyone. Geologists and paleontologists and people who study the weather." He spins. The gold-red of the sky rotates around him and he can feel the heat of the suns- different from Earth and their one star. It's more diffuse, less fierce, creating a comfortable warmth rather like evening after a hot summer's day.

"Okay, Hermann?" He glances at him. "I know this is a big deal and all for you, but can I just spoil it?"

Hermann looks at him, and an approximation of _have you ever bothered to ask?_ soaks through the Hive.

Newt laughs, twirls again, and lets it just _hit him_. His dream. Everyone's dream. The one he'd never dared believe could come true.

"Holy shit holy shit _holy shit I'm on another planet_!" Hermann laughs and Newt waves his hands. "Look at me! It another planet with _life_ and _I'm on it_ and you're my awesome alien boyfriend and do you know I've been fucking dreaming about this since I was like _in the womb_ , dude-"

 

* * *

 

"What a precocious youngster you must have been," Hermann murmurs, but the sky draws his eyes away from Newt's prancing.

This is his sky. This is the sky he should have been born under, if life had been fair. The light is diffuse and warm, the suns distant and close in a way Earth's sun never had been. The air is so thick in moisture he feels the filters in his lungs open to draw in water.

He leaves Newt laughing and steps down, scaling down the escarpment towards the sea-plain below. The ground gets uncertain almost at once and when Hermann looks down, every inch of ground is covered with puffballs. He kneels and strokes the strange softness of them, sees where is puffball and where is a strange, yellowish moss-fungus Newt will probably be waxing lyrical over in a few days.

He overturns a puffball and small, dot-like things that could be insects or arthropods or _anything_ crawl away in the soft, crumbling, porous earth.

He sits down, puts the puffball in his mouth and crunches.

It bursts sweet and bright, liquid, the fragments of the shell crunch under his teeth and he swallows, feeling them scratch the growing teeth along his throat.

"Hey," Newt kisses him, sits next to him, staring out over the incredible view. "Guess I'm not going to be cloning anything for you for a while, right?"

"Right," Hermann agrees absently. After an eternity with food such a scarcity, he has no idea how to cope with this plenty. An eternity of food.

And so many different kinds. They walk down and into the puffball forests, mites in a jungle, and the ground is alive. Waves of the little crawling dots swarm up the puffball towers, a skinmite crawls between the huge stalks, the smallest unclaimed patch of ground is covered in the yellowish growth. Life colonising every spare scrap of space.

They are most of the way down, before they can look back and make out the forward research station.

It’s being set up outside the Boneyard- although they're planning to take and use the space once the Jaegers are shipped through.

The front lines have moved; Earth is no longer the battlefield. If Newt is right, and the Masters are still out there, beyond yet another Breach, they will need to be ready.

And if they aren’t-

Well, then this is a new world, and in a world on this scale, Jaegers are at least the right size.

"Nah," Newt sees where he is looking and shakes his head. "I was thinking we could set up by the sea, that way we can get land and sea research together, okay?"

Yes. It feels like a dream. The strange gold, dreaming world, so silent but for their footfalls, the scrambling of the skinmites and the occasional odd hissing that seems to come from high above their heads. Newt points up, and Hermann catches sight of some glittering swarm of creatures flitting between the stalks.

There are no Kaiju; Hermann can feel the nearest one several miles away. They don't like coming so close to the pits. The memories are still too raw.

He feels more when they approach the shore. The ground sinks a little as they approach, a mixture of fine mud and sand. The water is smooth for miles, in a sort of shallow lagoon, the sunlight turns it a dark, gold seared green. Hermann bends down and touches the water. It feels cool, not cold. He dips his head in to drink. The water is fresh and saltless.

He looks at Newt, who holds a hand up and shakes his head. "I could have weird alien bugs- haven't you seen War of the Worlds?"

Hermann has. He's also lived twenty years in a world so alien none of its microbes and viruses could hurt him, but he lets it go. He splashes out a little way; the water is sweet and cool on his skin, buoyant, comfortable.

"Hermann!"

Hermann blinks, Newt is half-in the water, eyes wide and the fear _hits_ him like a bucket of ice, pouring off Newt is great, staggering waves. He splashes back quickly, “Newton-“

He sees it suddenly, from Newt’s mind. Himself, sliding off into the sea, sinking into this world- _his world_ and forgetting Newt and his former life forever.

Hermann smiles, stands and hugs Newt, soaking his jacket and shirt; “Of course not.” He whispers, “Of course I wouldn’t.” 

Newt rubs his face, forcing away tears. “It’s stupid.” He snarls, then, with a sigh, “I’m a mess.”

“Hush.” Hermann nuzzles him, “I understand, love.”

Newt hugs him, great and convulsively, desperately tight. Hermann rubs their cheeks together, lets Newt hang on for as long as he needs.

“Okay,” Newt relaxes his grip, “I’m okay, shit, sorry.”

Something moves in the water, nearby; Newt tenses, but the water is far too shallow for it to be a Kaiju. Hermann spots it under the water, and dives for it. Newt yelps as Hermann sprays him with water, then again when he comes back up with a squirming, struggling- _thing_ \- in his teeth.

“Let’s see.” Newt comes close, and Hermann tries to hold it but it tastes _wonderful_. Chill and cool and juicy and so _refreshing_. Newt tries to take it and Hermann tries to open his teeth- but it’s still trying to get free and Hermann will blame reflexes as to why he just tightens his teeth, and swallows the thing whole.

“Oh- what the hell!” Newt’s face falls; “Dude, you just ate a cute Cthulhu squid thing.”

Hermann licks his lips. “It was lovely,” he defends.

Newt sighs, shrugs, “Plenty more fish, and all.” He looks around eagerly at the lagoon, “There’s got to be- so _much_ here, holy shit this is just- so awesome.”

And it might be a little too much for Newton, because he drops down and sits in the water; it comes up to his chest, soaking him completely. “I’ve got work for, like- _forever._ I mean, I could die at a hundred and twenty and we wouldn’t have _started_ -“

At a hundred and twenty or even more, the thought of Newt dying is a deeply uncomfortable one. Hermann turns to him, sitting in the water- his stomach gives a happy, full twinge- and settling against Newt.

They look up, together, at the sky. The strange two-maybe-three stars huge and heavy above them. “It’s a gorgeous world,” Newt says finally. “You’re really lucky.”

It’s the first time this place has made him feel lucky- apart perhaps in being lucky to escape. But looking up at the suns, the open sea, the towers of puffballs and the open, living Hive- Hermann cannot disagree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand this is the end! I do still have a few fics planned in this universe, and of course I'm constantly exploring it in Thousand Worlds, but for Newt and Hermann, the worst is over, and they can rest. 
> 
> They've earned it.
> 
> Thank you for coming with me on this incredible journey.


End file.
